ODU School of Cybersecurity

ODU School of Cybersecurity

https://odu.edu/cyber/

DeapSECURE Workshops and Institutes

DeapSECURE provides hands-on training on high-performance computational techniques emphasizing applications to cybersecurity research. Since its inception in 2018, the DeapSECURE team has regularly offered workshops series and summer institutes to students, faculty and staff at Old Dominion University as well as select learners across the Commonwealth of Virginia. We offer these workshops and institutes to refine and teach the DeapSECURE lesson modules. A workshop may cover only one of the lesson module, whereas an institute typically covers multiple modules and take place over consecutive days, thus providing a concentrated period of time for learning new topics and techniques. Qualified learners are invited to participate in our upcoming workshops, watch past workshop’s recordings (found on individual lesson pages), or simply use our lessons as self-paced learning resources.

Registration for 2023 Summer Institute Is Open!

June 5-7, 2023, on ODU Norfolk Campus
Please follow the link above to learn more about this workshop and to register. Please sign up soon. Space is limited!

Registration deadline: May 25, 2023.

This page contain general information that you may want to know before joining DeapSECURE workhops:

A specific workshop/institute event may impose additional qualifications for the learners, offer different mix of lessons, add and/or customize the training materials. Please refer to your workshop announcement to learn more.

Target Audience

DeapSECURE workshops are aimed at (1) students with an interest in cutting-edge cybersecurity research, and (2) those who need to use HPC to analyze large amounts of data and/or employ machine learning techniques for their research projects. Generally speaking, due to the high level of technical and computing contents of the workshop, We recommend that you be at least a junior and have working knowledge in computer programming to apply for this training. Please also read more on the technical prerequisites of the training below.

Workshop Format

Generally speaking, the DeapSECURE workshops and institutes are conducted synchronously, whether in-person or virtually via an appropriate videoconferencing technology. Each workshop consists of a mix of lectures / hands-on activities to introduce learners to basic concepts and practical skills in HPC, Big Data, Machine Learning, and so on. Materials will be introduced at an introductory level. Hands-on activities are carried out in breakout sessions using Python and Jupyter notebooks. There will be teaching assistants to help the learners.

What Can I Expect Out of This Training?

Expect to have fun learning new topics and techniques, get your hands dirty with cool activities on supercomputers! While this workshop will not immediately make you an expert on big data, machine learning, or such subjects, you will have started your journey to use these techniques for your own goals—whether a cybersecurity project, or science research that require the use of these advanced computational techniques. You will be able to learn more on your own after attending the workshop.

What this training is NOT about: DeapSECURE is not a training on fundamentals of cybersecurity, cybersecurity operations (penetration test, intrusion detection, security scanning, etc.), cybersecurity threat analysis, cyber forensics, etc.

Prerequisites on Computing Skills

  1. Basic skill of writing computer programs is required to participate in this training. You need to have some experience of building simple computer programs—about 100 lines of code or less—preferably from scratch. The specific language matters less; it is the programming skill that matters. Popular languages such as C, C++, Fortran, Python, Matlab, Ruby, would be fine.

  2. The hands-on activities in the workshop primarily use the Python programming language, pandas, and scikit-learn.

  3. Experience with command-line interface is essential. Part of our workshop assumes skills on UNIX shell (e.g. bash/zsh/ksh).

  4. In this workshop, we do not assume or require knowledge in cybersecurity other than basic general knowledge that most Internet and computer users typically know.

Because DeapSECURE relies on learner’s existing skills on UNIX and Python, those who are not skilled in UNIX and/or Python are recommended to take the following lessons offered by Software Carpentry and taught by ODU’s Research Computing Services (RCS) prior to joining DeapSECURE workshops :

UNIX Shell Lesson (Software Carpentry)

Python Lesson (Software Carpentry)

ODU credentials are required to access recording!

You must login with ODU MIDAS credentials according to the instructions posted on this web page in order to access the recordings.

Why Cybersecurity?

DeapSECURE is targeted to teach computational skills to people with interest in cybersecurity, but it is also useful for those who want to learn about HPC, big data and machine learning in a general way. Techniques taught in DeapSECURE workshops are transferable to other disciplines, such as: science, engineering, finance, linguistics, etc. Why the emphasis on cybersecurity, you may ask? Two reasons:

  1. There is a great need to infuse knowledge about and experience in advanced computational techniques into the new educational field of “cybersecurity”. Introducing these techniques in the context familiar to cybersecurity students is a very effective way to let them connect them to their very subject of concern.

  2. As the world is now connected by means of computer technologies, cybersecurity has become everyone’s business. Even though you may not major in cybersecurity (or anything close to it), you still own technology devices which must be kept secure. Hacking, phishing, spam, malware is an unfortunate fact in the Internet. While DeapSECURE is not an education program on cybersecurity per se, it will expose you to general awareness of current issues in cybersecurity research.