Enhancing Cyber Hygiene in Research: Identifying Gaps and Proposing Solutions

My path to academia was circuitous about best. I graduated from West Point in the early eighties. For the next three decades, I focused on understanding and operationalizing military and government information networks to move secure voice and data to the decision-maker in the correct format at the right time. Conceptually, cybersecurity existed long before science fiction writer Bill Gibson (1984) coined the term. My focus has always been to provide that kind of security with information. Even after retiring from service, I focused on secure information technology solutions, spending the next decade in companies like Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and others. Realizing that my eligibility for the post-911 GI Bill was about to end, I pivoted to academia by getting a doctorate and joining the University of Southern Maine (USM).My current role allows me to use my expansive background to focus on human-centered cybersecurity research. This desire to learn state-of-the-art practices led me to apply for the Trusted Cyberinfrastructure (CI) Fellowship. The curriculum opened my eyes to the challenges of research cybersecurity. The program of study gave me a more expansive view of researchers' cyber hygiene challenges. This new perspective allows me to take what I have learned and fold in best practices for cyber hygiene into my everyday work and research community.