Cy­ber Fu­sion Cen­ter Blasts Maryville into the Fu­ture

While many im­prove­ments were made around cam­pus this sum­mer, the all-new Cy­ber Fu­sion Cen­ter is the most tech­no­log­i­cally ad­vanced. As the name sug­gests, the Cy­ber Fu­sion Cen­ter, CFC, was con­structed for use by stu­dents in Maryville’s cy­ber se­cu­rity pro­gram.

It is dif­fi­cult to clas­sify the Cy­ber Se­cu­rity Cen­ter us­ing com­mon ter­mi­nol­ogy. Dustin Lo­ef­fler, JD, As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor of Cy­ber Se­cu­rity and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems sees the cen­ter as an evo­lu­tion of the tra­di­tional class­room.

“This represents a general trend where the classroom is evolving into experimental learning rooms,” Loeffler said.

While stu­dents re­ceive credit for their work in the CFC, there are no lec­tures given or tests taken within the space. In­stead, stu­dents uti­lize the CFC to pro­vide their ser­vices, free of charge, to lo­cal char­i­ties, schools and non­prof­its. Both the stu­dents and the client or­ga­ni­za­tions ben­e­fit greatly from this. “Cy­ber Fu­sion Cen­ter pro­vides stu­dents with hands-on, tan­gi­ble skills, which put them ahead of their peers for in­tern­ships and full-time op­por­tu­ni­ties,” Lo­ef­fler said. Mean­while, the or­ga­ni­za­tions are given pro­tec­tion against hack­ing while be­ing able to uti­lize their money for the cause they are ded­i­cated to.

In ad­di­tion to pro­vid­ing cy­ber se­cu­rity, the CFC of­fers ad­di­tional ser­vices via the dig­i­tal foren­sics bench, Lo­ef­fler’s fa­vorite fea­ture. “This area al­lows us to do se­cu­rity test­ing on hard dri­ves and mo­bile de­vices at the foren­sic level. For ex­am­ple, if a teacher [of] one of our clients has a hard drive that fails, then we have the abil­ity to re­cover data via our foren­sics tools,”  says Lo­ef­fler. This ser­vice usu­ally costs 3,000 to 5,000 dol­lars, but is free through the CFC. He also thor­oughly en­joys the smart glass win­dow, which changes from translu­cent to clear at the flip of a switch.

Jon Tock, cy­ber se­cu­rity mi­nor and pres­i­dent of the Cy­ber­Saints club, echoed the feel­ings of his pro­fes­sor. “The Cy­ber Fu­sion Cen­ter puts Maryville a step ahead of any other uni­ver­sity. This gives the stu­dents tan­gi­ble skills and gives us hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence for our fu­tures that some­thing in a book could never teach us,” Tock, se­nior, said. Adding to their ex­cite­ment is the pure amount of tech­nol­ogy at their fin­ger­tips.

In ad­di­tion to the foren­sics bench, the CFC has four work­sta­tions. Each is equipped with three mon­i­tors, a Mac mini, two key­boards and an Ap­ple magic mouse. The work­sta­tions are also con­nected to mi­cro PCs that run Win­dows and Linux. This al­lows the stu­dents to work on all three ma­jor op­er­at­ing sys­tems, not just Ma­cOS. Al­low­ing clients to talk with the stu­dents as if they were in per­son is a Dou­ble 2 Per­sonal Telep­res­ence Ro­bot that can be dri­ven re­motely. Four tele­vi­sions equipped with Ap­ple TVs line the back wall, and Lo­ef­fler men­tioned that a touch mon­i­tor is on or­der. There is even a vir­tual re­al­ity head­set that pro­vides a unique learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and some cool vir­tual field trips. “The other cool piece of tech is the Ocu­lus Rift, which al­lows me to teach my stu­dents about net­work­ing vi­su­ally. Also, we can do cool things like tour the Lou­vre mu­seum in vir­tual re­al­ity,” Lo­ef­fler said.

The CFC will be uti­lized in sev­eral other ways. Var­i­ous guest speak­ers will be hold­ing court with stu­dents, some in per­son and some us­ing the Dou­ble 2, each se­mes­ter. Cy­ber­Saints will be host­ing weekly movie nights every Wednes­day, open to every­body. These nights will be fea­tur­ing tech­nol­ogy-based movies and TV shows, such as Mr. Ro­bot, which was shown last Wednes­day.

Lo­cated on the sec­ond floor of the ABAC right be­fore en­ter­ing Reid, the room hous­ing the Cen­ter was pre­vi­ously a con­ven­tional class­room. The CFC was pro­posed by Lo­ef­fler in fall 2015 and cre­ated over the span of five weeks this sum­mer. The phys­i­cal con­struc­tion took three weeks and the tech­no­log­i­cal im­ple­men­ta­tion took an­other two weeks. Even­tu­ally, the Cy­ber Se­cu­rity pro­gram in­tends to have the room full of work­sta­tions.

If you are in­ter­ested in be­com­ing a cy­ber se­cu­rity ma­jor or mi­nor, email pro­fes­sor Lo­ef­fler at dlo­ef­fler@maryville.edu or speak with your ad­vi­sor.