Our picksKnown Unknowns of Cybersecurity Education | Ransomware Attacks Escalate | Spies to Run Cybercrime Hotline, and more

Mapping the Known Unknowns of Cybersecurity Education (Trey Herr, Arthur P. B. Laudrain, and Max Smeets, CFR)
Cybersecurity is of increasing importance to societies around the world. This is reflected in national debates, where news stories about breaches, attacks, and policy challenges find their way into the headlines nearly every day. It is also reflected in the curricula of colleges and universities; many are starting to include cybersecurity as an explicit course of study.
As cybersecurity is still a maturing topic for the education community, it is prudent and timely to evaluate the state of cybersecurity instruction in political science and discuss how to improve it. To undertake this task, our forthcoming article in the Journal of Political Science Education examines patterns and variations in the content of syllabi on cybersecurity courses within political science, looking across campuses to understand the relative balance of policy topics, technical concepts, and theoretical debates in how courses are structured and presented.

AP Exclusive: Border Apprehensions Drop 8 Straight Months (AP / New York Times)
The number of border apprehensions has dropped for the eighth straight month, following crackdowns by the Trump administration that include forcing asylum seekers back over the U.S.-Mexico border to wait out their claims, a Homeland Security official said Monday.
The official said the number of encounters with border officials over the past four months was 165,000. A year earlier during the same time it was about 242,000. The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the official results have not been released.

Huawei, ZTE Urge U.S. Not to Impose National Security Risk Labels (Reuters / Fox Business)
In November, the FCC voted 5-0 to initially designate Huawei and ZTE as national security risks in a move that would bar their U.S. rural carrier customers from tapping an $8.5 billion government fund to purchase equipment

Iowa Caucuses App Used to Tally Votes Not Vetted by DHS, Official Says (Megan Henney, Fox Business)

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which was established in 2018, offered to test the app from a ‘hacking perspective’

What Cybersecurity Operations Can Learn from Self-Driving Trucks (Mike Armistead, Forbes)
It might not be the first comparison you’d think of, but there’s a significant parallel between long-haul drivers and front-line cybersecurity analysts. Both sets of people sit before screens – either glass windshields or computer monitors — for hours at a time, trying to remain vigilant to detect potential threats and respond accordingly. This activity is fraught with the occupational hazards of tired eyes, boredom and dissatisfaction. “Highway hypnosis” equals “screen fatigue.”
In addition, personal skills, inherent assumptions, biases and past experiences affect how drivers/analysts interpret the signals they receive. What’s more, companies looking to fill either of these positions face severe shortages in skilled personnel.

Ransomware Attacks Are Now Targeting Industrial Control Systems (Danny Palmer, ZDNet)
Ekans ransomware is designed to target industrial systems in what researchers describe as a “deeply concerning evolution” in malware.

Where America’s Climate Migrants Will Go As Sea Level Rises (Linda Poon, CityLab)
13 million U.S. coastal residents are expected to be displaced by 2100 due to sea level rise. Researchers are starting to predict where they’ll go.

Spies to Run Cybercrime Hotline after Scandal at Action Fraud (Morgan Bentley, The Times)
British spies are designing a hotline for businesses that fall victim to cybercrime after failings at Action Fraud, the national fraud reporting center, The Times can reveal.
The National Cyber Security Centre, a branch of GCHQ, is planning to launch the phone line by March next year, promising to make it easier for companies to report online crimes.
The intelligence agency said that reporting cybercrime was “critical to our national security”, with an increasing number of people targeted online by international criminals and threats of attacks from hostile states including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

Washington State’s Rate of Natural Disasters Tripled in Last Couple Decades (MyNorthwest)
A new study found that between 2000 and 2017, the state of Washington experienced 61 FEMA-reported natural disasters.
It was a 165 percent increase from the previous two decades from 1980 to 1999, in which 23 natural disasters were reported. The study is courtesy of insurance website QuoteWizard, which analyzed FEMA natural disaster data in the decades spanning 1980 to 2017 and compared each state’s rate of increase.
Texas saw the most natural disasters during the 2000 to 2017 time period with a 172, followed by California at 153, and Oklahoma at 122.