In the past year, Criminal Investigations and Network Analysis (CINA) center of excellence at George Mason University gave undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to intern with the Department of Homeland Security.
The program, entitled CINA Scholars, assigned graduate student Fatema Tuz Johra to work with DHS Cyber Crime Center (C3). The Bangladesh native shared her excitement saying, “I’ve done a lot of projects with digital investigations and analyzing digital media and I really liked it so I’m hoping to get more hands on experience.”
After her internship, Johra was hired as GRA for a project funded by C3.
The CINA Scholars program places outstanding undergraduate and graduate students as interns at DHS organizations. The students work on-site with DHS staff on current problems and challenges, and students are provided a stipend during their time at DHS.
Through the program students have the opportunity to get real-world, hands-on experience with active practitioners. They are gaining context and understanding to apply what they learn in classes, all while still actively enrolled so the work informs the classes which support the work.
Interning at the DHS Cyber Crime Center, the four CINA interns worked on problems related to the Dark Web, online anonymity and attribution, cyber-criminal organizations, mobile devices, forensic data recovery, virtual machines, audio and video data analysis, and open source investigation and analysis tools.
Selection as a CINA scholar is competitive. Students provide a CV in response to an announcement for a particular organization and desired skills. Applications are reviewed and a pool of selected candidates then interview with the DHS organization. Final selections are made and the students receive an appointment letter.
In the last round of selections there were about 20 applications. Of the 20 received, 9 were chosen to be sent to DHS Cyber Crime Center for review. Jim Jones, CINA Science Committee member and associate professor for the Volgenau School of Engineering, spoke to the quality of the Mason students applying, “They intended to hire 1 or 2, but after interviewing all 9 they wanted to hire 4, and CINA management agreed to support all 4. At the end of summer, C3 asked if the students could continue, and they all are (3 as interns and 1 as a graduate research assistant).”