Realism in Teaching Cybersecurity Research: The Agile Research Process

Part 1: Innovative MethodsInternational audienceAs global threats to information systems continue to increase, the value of effective cybersecurity research has never been greater. There is a pressing need to educate future researchers about the research process itself, which is increasingly unpredictable, multi-disciplinary, multi-organizational, and team-oriented. In addition, there is a growing demand for cybersecurity research that can produce fast, authoritative, and actionable results. In short, speed matters. Organizations conducting cyber defense can benefit from the knowledge and experience of the best minds in order to make effective decisions in difficult and fast moving situations. The Agile Research process is a new approach to provide such rapid, authoritative, applied research. It is designed to be fast, transparent, and iterative, with each iteration producing results that can be applied quickly. Purdue University is employing Agile Research as a teaching vehicle in an innovative, multi-university graduate program with government sponsor participation, as described in this paper. Because it simulates real-world operations and processes, this program is equipping students to become effective contributors to cybersecurity research

Agile Research for Cybersecurity: Creating Authoritative, Actionable Knowledge When Speed Matters

Securing information systems from attack and com-promise is a problem of massive scope and global scale. Traditional, long-term research provides a deep understanding of the foundations for protecting systems, networks, and infrastructures. But sponsors often need applied research that will create results for immediate application to unforeseen cybersecurity events. The Agile Research process is a new approach to provide this type of rapid, authoritative, applied research. It is designed to be fast, transparent, and iterative, with each iteration producing results that can be applied quickly. The idea is to engage subject-matter experts fast enough to make a difference. Agile Research requires new levels of collaboration and performance, plus adaptive organizational structures that support this new way of working. In addition to its application in Government, Agile Research is being employed in academic settings, and is influencing how research requirements and researchers are identified and matched, and research traineeship

Agile Research for Cybersecurity: Creating Authoritative, Actionable Knowledge When Speed Matters

Securing information systems from attack and com-promise is a problem of massive scope and global scale. Traditional, long-term research provides a deep understanding of the foundations for protecting systems, networks, and infrastructures. But sponsors often need applied research that will create results for immediate application to unforeseen cybersecurity events. The Agile Research process is a new approach to provide this type of rapid, authoritative, applied research. It is designed to be fast, transparent, and iterative, with each iteration producing results that can be applied quickly. The idea is to engage subject-matter experts fast enough to make a difference. Agile Research re-quires new levels of collaboration and performance, plus adaptive organizational structures that support this new way of working. In addition to its application in Government, Agile Research is being employed in academic settings, and is influencing how research requirements and researchers are identified and matched, and research traineeship

Enhancing the Tissue Donor Pool through Donation after Death in the Field

Introduction: Tissue transplantation is an important adjunct to modern medical care and is used daily to save or improve patient lives. Tissue allografts include bone, tendon, corneas, heart valves and others. Increasing utilization may lead to tissue shortages, and tissue procurement organizations continue to explore ways to expand the cadaveric donor pool. Currently more than half of all deaths occur outside the acute care setting. Hypothesis: Many who suffer prehospital deaths might be eligible for non-organ tissue donation. Methods: A retrospective review of electronic prehospital medical records was conducted from May 1, 2008 through December 31, 2009. All prehospital deaths were included irrespective of cause. Once identified, additional medical history was obtained from prehospital, inpatient, and emergency department records. Age, medical history, and time of death were compared to exclusion criteria for four tissue procurement organizations (MTF, LifeNet, LifeCell, EyeBank). After analysis, percentages of eligible donors were calculated. Results: Over 50,000 prehospital records were reviewed; 432 subjects died in the field and were eligible for analysis. Ages ranged from four to 103 years of age; the average was 68.3 (SD = 20.1) years. After exclusion for age, medical conditions, and time of death, 185 unique patients (42.8%) were eligible for donation to at least one of the four tissue procurement organizations (range 11.6%-34.3%). Conclusions: After prehospital death, many individuals may be eligible for tissue donation. These findings suggest that future prospective studies exploring tissue donation after prehospital death are indicated. These studies should aim to clarify eligibility criteria, create protocols and infrastructure, and explore the ethical implications of expanding tissue donation to include this population

Coronal Heating as Determined by the Solar Flare Frequency Distribution Obtained by Aggregating Case Studies

Flare frequency distributions represent a key approach to addressing one of the largest problems in solar and stellar physics: determining the mechanism that counter-intuitively heats coronae to temperatures that are orders of magnitude hotter than the corresponding photospheres. It is widely accepted that the magnetic field is responsible for the heating, but there are two competing mechanisms that could explain it: nanoflares or Alfv\'en waves. To date, neither can be directly observed. Nanoflares are, by definition, extremely small, but their aggregate energy release could represent a substantial heating mechanism, presuming they are sufficiently abundant. One way to test this presumption is via the flare frequency distribution, which describes how often flares of various energies occur. If the slope of the power law fitting the flare frequency distribution is above a critical threshold, $\alpha=2$ as established in prior literature, then there should be a sufficient abundance of nanoflares to explain coronal heating. We performed $>$600 case studies of solar flares, made possible by an unprecedented number of data analysts via three semesters of an undergraduate physics laboratory course. This allowed us to include two crucial, but nontrivial, analysis methods: pre-flare baseline subtraction and computation of the flare energy, which requires determining flare start and stop times. We aggregated the results of these analyses into a statistical study to determine that $\alpha = 1.63 \pm 0.03$. This is below the critical threshold, suggesting that Alfv\'en waves are an important driver of coronal heating.Comment: 1,002 authors, 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, published by The Astrophysical Journal on 2023-05-09, volume 948, page 7