On October 10, AU’s Khan Institute hosted the American University Cyber Community Breakfast, an event designed to gather and connect AU cyber faculty, staff, and students. The event, which welcomed Bash Kazi, the CEO of Cyber Range Solutions (Institute co-sponsor Shahal Khan, SIS/BA ’95, was unable to attend), enjoyed high levels of SPA representation, including faculty members Sasha O’Connell, Monty McGee, Suleyman Ozeren, Jim Burrell, Kiran Raj, and Diana Burley, as well as a crowd of SPA undergraduate and graduate students and alumni.

The Shahal M. Khan Cyber and Economic Security Institute (Khan Institute) launched last spring with a $5 million gift from Khan and a partnership with Cyber Range Solutions (CRS). Spearheaded by AU’s Vice President for Research and Innovation Burley, the Khan Institute will provide cybersecurity programming for AU students as well as professional development opportunities for community stakeholders navigating evolving cybersecurity threats.
 
“Cybersecurity is not just for engineers and computer scientists,” Kazi told attendees. “There are many jobs in that area which pertain to risk management policy and the legal issues that surround it. Cyber is no longer an IT risk. It is an organizational risk. It is a corporate risk. It is a personal risk that we have to help nations, ourselves, and our organizations to address.”

“AU students, whether technical or not, should understand what systems need to do and how individuals need to interact in order to protect them,” said Burley. “You might not be the CIO; you might be the CFO, the chief strategist, the policy person, or the risk person. We are designing courses and modules to go within courses that will allow you to put hands on keyboards and actually engage in exercises, so that you can be a part of what an incident response might look like.”

The Khan Institute will offer training courses, guest speaker lectures, and workshops in cyber incident response, network security, and the protection of vital infrastructure, incorporating AU’s interdisciplinary approach.

“As faculty members, [we won’t] be researching in our own areas alone,” said Burley. “The institute provides us with an umbrella so that we can come together. Regardless of the job that you'll have, you will have some role and some connection to securing your enterprise, because cybersecurity does not fit within silos or boundaries.”

The Khan Institute and CRS are developing a cyber range at AU, a facility that deploys simulated cyber training activities and research. AU’s cyber range will train students and cyber security professionals on incident response, network security, and the protection of critical, high-value assets and infrastructure. 

“What we're bringing to American University is state-of-the art,” said Kazi. “It's leagues ahead of what we've got at any other institution. I'm looking for personnel, because like everybody else, I can't find qualified cyber people. This is not just security operations center (SOC) analysts or cybersecurity experts; [employers can’t even find] managers or instructors.”

Kazi drew inspiration from best practices in aviation training, which once faced a similar talent drought.

“The way that you train cyber is very similar to the way that you train aircraft pilots,” said Kazi. “It's about experiential learning, building conditioned reflex actions, building muscle memory . . . We addressed the skills shortage in the aviation sector, helping create lots of pilots, by developing simulators.”
 
Though CRS has installed cyber ranges in dozens of other schools, its AU partnership is unique.

“You are going to have a center here that is second to none in the world,” said Kazi, “which will allow you to develop skills and learn how to use tools available to the most advanced personnel in the cybersecurity universe. You'll be able to interact with intellectuals and experts to learn how to mitigate [threats], build processes and procedures for yourself, and understand, recognize, and investigate opportunities in the cybersecurity arena.”