When the Volgenau School of Engineering launched its Bachelor of Science in Cybersecurity Engineering, Raytheon was one of a handful of legacy corporate partner companies that supported the idea. Now, the first students in the program are juniors and seniors and Raytheon is the first company to step up and sponsor a project that will prepare students for their senior advance design project.
To set the stage for the project Robert Liebfried, Raytheon Senior Manager, Systems Engineering, wanted to make the project more realistic and interesting so he helped to organize a meeting where the students would learn about their customer’s organization and the project’s objective.
During the meeting, the Raytheon managers modeled the vulnerable aspects of a unmanned aircraft system and the methods to harden them. Representatives from the company provided an overview of the CyberSecurity and Special Missions (CSM) organization, the CODE Center, an overview of the class project.
“The project is designed to stretch student’s knowledge and application of cyber security engineering, modeling and simulation and project management skills in a team setting under real world circumstances,” said Liebfried.
Commercial Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) platform needs to be hardened. Many hardware and software components are open source and made for consumers with little concern for security. One of Raytheon’s customers needs assistance developing and modeling security enhancements for the platform.
The students will act as subcontractors and provide detailed reports modeling the vulnerable aspects of the systems and methods to harden them.
“Projects like this one not only provide a opportunities for students to solve real world problems, they give our corporate partners a preview of the talents of their future employees,” said Linda Kovac, director of development for Volgenau.
Participating in the meeting were: Director of the Volgenau School of Engineering’s Cybersecurity Engineering Program, Peggy Brouse; and from Raytheon, Senior Manager, Systems Engineering, Robert Leibfried; CyberSecurity and Special Missions Technical Director, Phil Harvey; Sr. Program Manager for the Cyber Operations, Development and Evaluation (CODE) Center, Doug Jones; Principal Cyber Engineer Scott Harlan; and Principal Cyber Engineer, Scott Lear.