Cybersecurity remains a critical concern for school systems nationwide, showing a consistent increase in publicly disclosed K-12 cyber incidents over the past 5 years. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's 2024 Homeland Threat Assessment underscores this trend, predicting ongoing targeting of K-12 school networks by cyber actors who will…

This paper presents a novel approach for mitigating wormhole attacks on wireless networks using propagation delay timing. The wormhole attack is a persistent security threat that threatens the integrity of network communications, potentially leading to data theft or other malicious activities. While various methods exist for combating wormhole…

Detecting and mitigating wormhole attacks in wireless networks remains a critical challenge due to their deceptive nature and potential to compromise network integrity. This paper proposes a novel approach to wormhole detection by leveraging propagation delay analysis between network nodes. Unlike traditional methods that rely on signature-based…

Software vulnerabilities in commercial products are an issue of national importance. The most prevalent breaches are input validation vulnerabilities, and these are easily avoidable. This dissertation contributes to cybersecurity education with a set of hands-on interventions tailored for three CS courses, a set of reflection prompts to encourage…

Cloud adoption in industrial sectors, such as process, manufacturing, health care, and finance, is steadily rising, but as it grows, the risk of targeted cyberattacks has increased. Hence, effectively defending against such attacks necessitates skilled cybersecurity professionals. Traditional human-based cyber-physical education is resource…

The growing importance of researching online activities, such as cyber-deviance and cyber-crime, as well as the use of online tools (e.g. questionnaires, games, and other interactive tools) has created new ethical and legal challenges for researchers, which can be even more complicated when researching adolescents. In this article, we highlight…

Private higher educational institutions are at a high risk of cyber-attacks based on the amount of data they consume about students, their families, donors, faculty, and employees. I determined that there was a gap in the body of knowledge concerning how IT leaders in private higher education secure their information assets. The purpose of this…

Safe, secure, resilient, and accessible education system infrastructure, both physical and digital, is an essential factor for success. Yet, the digital infrastructure in the nation's K-12 schools is increasingly under threat from malicious cyber actors. This fact sheet: (1) describes the most common types of cyber threats currently facing school…

The purpose of this generic qualitative inquiry research study is to examine the features that need to be improved in self-paced cybersecurity awareness training to educate retail employees to identify phishing attacks. Malicious phishing attacks are a significant threat to retail corporations' business operations and confidential data. Employees'…

The Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet-connected technologies are becoming more and more prevalent in our houses today, with over 31 billion connected devices all over the world. This qualitative exploratory study looks at ten participants' home devices and protection measures. The participants were all considered the head of the household and…

Modern day organizations face a continuous challenge in ensuring that their employees are cognizant with malware and cyber attacks, since it has the potential to cause financial, legal, and reputational damage to them. Current awareness training exists in a multitude of forms to equip employees and organizations to protect themselves against…

There is an ever-pressing need for cybersecurity awareness and implementation of learning strategies in the workplace to mitigate the increased threat posed by cyber-attacks and exacerbated by an untrained workforce. The lack of cybersecurity knowledge amongst government employees has increased to critical levels due to the amount of sensitive…

The need to protect confidential data stored in university enterprise information systems and to prevent infiltration through phishing cyber attacks by malicious individuals and organizations has emerged. The unfortunate target of phishing attacks is university employees and students with access to confidential information. This research specifies…

With the increase in cybercrime costing organizations financial loss and loss to their reputation, the need to hire qualified and experienced employees is paramount. As the gap in the workforce shortage widens, cybersecurity education and training institutions are struggling to produce a capable workforce with enough experience and skills that…

Accreditation activities are critical for an institution pursuing excellent recognition. However, the segmented approach to records or document management employed for accreditation, which relies on paper-based records, has several flaws. Impediments such as misplacement, crumpling, termites, and other conditions that might result in damaged or…