Do you want to work for the Department of
Defense and help defend our nation’s cyber space against CyberCrime and
CyberTerrorism?
And have your education fully paid for?
Through the Department of
Defense Scholarship for Service (SFS) program, [sometimes known as the National
Security Agency Cyber Defenders Scholarship] North Carolina Agriculture and
Technology State University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte
will provide grants to students to study in the field of information security.
Each scholarship recipient
will complete a graduate degree in Computer Science. Students will be in the
program for up to two years. All students will receive stipends plus support
for tuition and fees and room and board. Upon graduation, students will be
working for a DoD agency as a civilian employee.
All students will complete a
Graduate Certificate in Information Security and Privacy at UNC Charlotte and a
Master’s degree in Computer Science at NC A&T State University. There will
be additional activities that are specially created for the SFS students.
Each student in the program
will be supported for up to two years. The specific benefits will be:
· A graduate student will be paid a stipend
of $17,000 per year.
·
Applicable tuition and fees,
including any out-of-state and graduate student fees, will be paid on behalf of
the scholarship recipients. The cost of required textbooks will be
reimbursed. This support is provided in
addition to the stipend.
The requirements for each
student in the program and the eligibility criteria are:
·
Must be a
·
Veterans are especially
encouraged to apply.
·
Must be a full time graduate
student at NC A&T State University in the Computer Science masters program.
·
Each student must meet
selection criteria for federal employment (final job placement may require
security clearances, so each scholarship recipient may be required to undergo
the background investigation required to obtain such clearances).
·
During the summers while
enrolled in the program, each student will be placed by the National Security
Agency (NSA) into internship positions at a Department of Defense agency.
·
Upon graduation, each student
will be required to work for a Department of Defense agency as a civilian
employee. The work requirement time period matches the supported time
period.
Each applicant to the SFS
program should provide the following:
Full application material
must be received before February 6, 2008.
DoD Scholarship for Service c/o Dr. Anna Yu
1601 E. Market St.
Greensboro, NC 27411
A similar program is available at the University of North Carolina
at Charlotte, see http://www.sis.uncc.edu/DODSFS.html
for more details.
The selection criteria are as
follows:
o
o Official acceptance by in Computer
Science Master program at NC A&T State University.
o Expected graduation with MS degree in
computer science within two years.
o At least a 3.0 cumulative GPA on a 4.0
scale.
o Evaluation of the student’s potential
success in the IA program.
In addition, we will consider
the following criteria:
·
Commitment to participate in
summer service and service following degree completion according to the
guidelines of the SFS program.
·
Commitment to participate in
assessment activities after their scholarship and required federal service has
ended.
·
Demonstrated leadership,
participation in team activities, prior social service, and/or evidence of
creative and independent thinking and/or acting.
The most qualified students will be selected.
·
Can I apply if I have an
Associate's degree? No,
you need to be admitted to one of the graduate programs listed in the selection
criteria.
·
Am I required to work for
two years even if I can obtain my degree faster? No. The work requirement is a one for
one match between the time you are supported and the time you are asked to
work. So if you are supported for three semesters, then you would have a work
obligation of one and a half years.
·
Can I apply for this
program if I am interested in a PhD degree in computer science? No. Only B.S. and M.S. degrees are
available through this program.
·
What would be the
starting salary for someone graduating from this program? Persons with a master's degree may be
appointed at the GS-9 level. Federal pay
rates vary depending on the location where the person works. Also, special pay rates have been created for
IT-related jobs. These rates may be
viewed at the following web site: http://www.opm.gov/oca/02tables/SSR/index.htm.
·
What should the letters
of recommendations include? The faculty panel will evaluate each applicant based on the following
criteria: Problem identification and analysis; Effective presentation;
Effective written communications; Response to people’s needs, feelings, and
capabilities (e.g. service at K-12 schools). The faculty panel seeks input from
a variety of sources including the reference letters.
·
Can I use the same
reference letters for graduate school application as well as scholarship
application? Yes. Please
indicate in your scholarship application that you would like to use the same
reference letters as your graduate application. We will obtain these letters
from the graduate school.
Access
control policy management. This research
is the collaboration of several researchers and aims at developing a framework
for large/multiple enterprises to manage access control policies. The approach
integrates role-based access control, delegation, distributed trust management,
PMI and PKI.
Authentication
architectures for healthcare applications. This research
aims at the development of a robust, easy to use, scalable authentication
architecture to be used for strong authentication. Although it is targeted for
health care applications, many aspects of the architecture are generic and can
be used by other types of applications as well.
Authentication
protocols for token-based wearable devices. This research is looking at a new, patented approach
to wireless-based strong user authentication based on wearable communication devices.
It enables the development of innovative wireless applications that can protect
the privacy of users in a wireless communication environment.
Efficient
algorithms for encryption and digital signature. Representing
a significant improvement over previous works, this research has resulted a new
class of algorithms and protocols that combine encryption and digital signature
into a single algorithm. It can be applied with a variety of public-key
encryption techniques and result in very significant savings in computing time.
One of the promising applications of this patented approach is that it can be
used in wireless communication with significant saving in power consumption
over traditional methods.
Information
security architecture for collaborative working environments. This
research investigates alternative security models and architectures for
collaborative working environments, including workflow and context-rich
information environments.
Modular
intrusion detection. The focus of this research seeks to create a new
modular paradigm for intrusion detection. One key characteristic is that it
will be extremely scalable, ranging from home based network to large networks
spanning multiple geographical locations.
Security
for resource constrained computing. A security extension to KVM (a micro version
of Java) for PDAs running on the Palm operating system has been developed.
Faculty and students are currently investigating new and efficient information
security techniques for the next generation of hand-held devices.
Survivability mechanisms for mobile networks. Perform critical analysis of protocol behavior for both cellular and ad hoc network architectures. The objective is to develop a realistic test bed to assess how mobile networks can continue to operate under various attack/disaster scenarios