Subawardee

UW-Whitewater

Project Lead

Project Description

Coinciding with the Covid pandemic has been a staggering increase in cybersecurity attacks particularly against small businesses and organizations in rural America. In the past year, 47% of small businesses experienced a cyber attack costing up to $200,000. Many small businesses cannot recover from such attacks and 50% will close within 6 months of an attack First In Response, Service, and Training. Exacerbating the new cyber pandemic is the cybersecurity workforce shortage with >6,000 open positions in Wisconsin alone.

The proposed CyberFirst Cooperative (CFC) will address these issues in rural Wisconsin’s small agricultural businesses with a focus on farmers. A team of University of Wisconsin--Whitewater faculty and staff along with several strategic education and business partners (e.g., Wisconsin Corn Growers, Waukesha County Technical School (WCTC), Maydm, Inc.) will employ a studentbased cybersecurity team to provide a broad-based assessment of small, rural agricultural business’s (farms) information systems including determination of their vulnerability to security breaches such as ransomware attacks.

The student teams will be led by students from UW-W Cybersecurity master’s and bachelor’s degree programs, WCTC’s Information Technology Associate Degree and Registered Apprenticeship Programs, and Maydm, Inc.’s program for high school girls of color. The Cyber Teams will be supervised by a Project Manager and guided by UWW and WCTC faculty. The Cyber Team will pilot the effort by focusing on the nearly 6,000 farmers in fours southern Wisconsin counties (Jefferson, Rock, Walworth, and Waukesha) CyberFirst will:

(1) Assess the resilience of IT systems through a readiness review;

(2) Develop on-the-job cybersecurity skill sets for students (high school through graduate school) to add new talent to the pipeline;

(3) Reskill and upskill incumbent workers;

(4) Focus on underserved populations in rural Wisconsin (e.g., rural, minority and veteran-owned farms) and underrepresented minority students at UW Whitewater and WCTC. 

Sustainability of the Co-op will be developed through organizational memberships. The Cyber Teams will assist in response to cyber threats, provide IT assessments, and offer basic training to business’ employees. The Co-op will provide essential experience for students and critical assistance to small agri- businesses and enterprises in our rural region

Award Amount

$47,951