Center of Cyber Security


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Department of Computer Science
P.O. Box 9068
Virginia State University
Hunter McDaniel Building
Carter G. Woodson Avenue
Petersburg, VA 23806

Director: Dr. Joseph Shelton
Office: HM302Sc
jshelton [AT] vsu [DOT] edu




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Cyber security and digital forensics is becoming increasingly crucial for our society as many critical infrastructures are in the cyber domain and are becoming prime targets for cyberattacks and cybercrimes. The Cyber Security and Digital Forensics [CSDF] center has a two-fold mission: (a) To analyze, develop and produce solutions to cyber security related problems, and (b) to educate the center members in basic research practices and professional development. The two main research thrusts of CSDF center are (i) Cyber Defense and digital forensics research and (ii) Biometric-based IoT solution development. Through these thrusts, the CSDF center leads cyber security and data forensics research at VSU.

Digital forensics: The goal of this thrust is to prepare students to become cybersecurity specialist in the areas of digital forensics, network, and infrastructure. Through the center of cyber defense and digital forensics, students will experience how the cyberspace environment functions. Students will be exposed to virtualization technologies to simulate penetration testing, network architectures to monitor networked traffic and detect anomalies, and forensics techniques and equipment to find evidence of cyber-crimes.

Biometric-based IoT solution development: The focus of this thrust entails the study of biometrics and IoT solutions for access control as it pertains to cyber security. In addition to access control, there is also a focus on behavioral biometrics for continual authentication. Students in this thrust will study the application of different classifiers on behavioral biometrics for improved classification of cyber threats. This thrust looks at how an individual designated machine is used. If any anomalous behavior of any individual or object is detected, a flag will be raised to initiate preventative actions.