Research

Since its establishment in 2009, UNOCC’s overall mission has been to develop and maintain cybersecurity research and educational expertise on the UNO campus in support of its educa- tional mission, as well as, to be a community resource for the people, industries, and federal employers of the entire Greater New Orleans area by providing:

• Advanced educational and research opportunities for all UNO undergraduate, graduate, and non-degree students in cybersecurity;
• Enhanced cybersecurity workforce training opportunities both for UNO students, and for working professionals seeking mid-career (re)training and skills enhancement.
• Cybersecurity outreach and educational opportunities for K-12 schools;
• General support for events and initiatives in the Greater New Orleans area that enhance its stature and reputation in the area of cybersecurity, with an emphasis on workforce development.

To date, UNOCC has been awarded over $6.5 million in federal research grants and con- tracts, including $2 million in active current funding from NSF and DoD, which supports 8-12 graduate and undergraduate research assistants, two postdoc/research staff, and one adjunct faculty members.

The University of New Orleans is designated as a National Center of Academic Excellence (CAE) in Information Assurance Education (CAE) and in Information Assurance Research (CAE-R) by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-the only university holding these designations in the State of Louisiana. Faculty and students in the IA program at UNO work together on cutting edge problems involving reverse engineering malicious software, developing better digital forensics tools to help investigators recover data and solve computer crimes more efficiently, and creating new strategies for battling computer viruses. In addition to our research, the department offers a variety of exciting IA courses, including reverse engineering, operating systems internals, digital forensics, penetration testing, secure programming, and network security. Research and instruction are carried out in two state-of-the-art facilities: The Greater New Orleans Center for Information Assurance (GNOCIA) and its sister lab, the Networking and Security Laboratory (NSSAL). These labs provide workstations with an extensive array of commercial and open source software, including IDA Pro, AccessData’s Forensic Toolkit, and zynamics BinDiff and BinNavi, to expose students to the same tools that IA professionals use in their day-to-day jobs. All of our IA classes contain extensive laboratory components… you will do IA, not just sit and listen to lectures.