WiSys NSF Engines Grant

There has been a staggering increase in cybersecurity attacks particularly against small and medium-sized businesses and organizations in rural America. Many small businesses cannot recover from such attacks and 50% will close within 6 months of an attack. There is also a cybersecurity workforce shortage with more than 6,000 open positions in Wisconsin alone.

Through the WiSys NSF-Engines grant, our goal in the pilot project (CyberFirst Coop) is to 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 partners will employ a student-based 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. We will not only conduct an assessment of cyber-readiness of agricultural organizations, but also help learners and employees develop their cybersecurity skills to add new cybersecurity talent to the pipeline.

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