Training Expands UA’s Cybersecurity Expertise to Minority-Serving Schools Across Nation
The hands-on PACT program provides research and leadership opportunities for undergrads and graduate students.
Steven Halwood, a student at Navajo Technical University, is working on a smart house research project as part of the Partnership for Proactive Cybersecurity Training summer program, which just completed its fourth year.
Steven Halwood, a student at Navajo Technical University, experienced many firsts at the University of Arizona during summer 2023 in the Partnership for Proactive Cybersecurity Training (PACT) program. For starters, he figured out how to do the coding to create two types of cyberattacks on a smart house, and subsequently how to prevent them.
“I had no idea how to launch any kind of attacks when I first got here,” said Halwood, a law enforcement student who plans to go to law school, then on to a career in Navajo tribal politics. “Now I can say I’m a novice or an intermediate hacker.”
Halwood’s NTU instructors urged him to participate in PACT for cybersecurity training when he was studying how to use technology, such as cell phone location records, to find missing persons.
NTU’s main location is in Crownpoint, New Mexico, and Halwood attends the campus in Chinle, Arizona. At the UA, the largest university he’s visited, Halwood encountered “a whole bunch of new faces and new cultures” and researched behavior analysis techniques to improve security for technology that uses Internet of Things, such as smart houses and autonomous vehicles. He produced a video detailing the findings that will be published on the PACT website and YouTube.
“I jumped into a new subject that will influence our futures,” said Halwood.
Two Ways to Learn
The PACT summer program is a partnership between the UA, Navajo Technical University and Howard University that’s funded by the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration. Undergraduate students of the three universities gather at the UA for a summer-long research intensive.
PACT also offers an online cybersecurity certificate program for undergraduate and graduate students at all 56 schools in the DOE’s Minority Serving Institution Partnership Program. Since PACT began at the UA in fall 2019, 237 students have completed at least one aspect of the program, with many from the summer studies also completing the online course.
