The University of Missouri–St. Louis is home to the Cybersecurity and Information Technology Innovation Lab (CITIL) which acts as an interdisciplinary center for cybersecurity education, research, and outreach. CITIL is the hub for UMSL's state-of-the-art dedicated cybersecurity laboratory facilities to foster student learning, and research. CITIL is located in Express Scripts Hall room 204.
UMSL offers interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate cybersecurity programs offered by the departments of Information Systems and Technology and Computer Science.
Departments also collaborated on the CITIL's outreach mission related activities such as the annual STLCyberCon. Learn more...
The interdisciplinary cybersecurity programs are guided by industry advisory boards affiliated with the Department of Information Systems and Technology and the Department of Computer Science.
Faculty from different departments teach cybersecurity courses and conduct interdisciplinary research. Learn more...
Dr. Vijay Anand
Associate Professor of Information Systems and Technology
The CITIL provides students with access to contemporary technologies and tools to help them learn both business and technical aspects of information security. CITIL also provides faculty and students with compute and other technical resources for engaging in research projects. CITIL currently has two major components: 1) a virtual lab, and 2) physical labs.
Students have access to a fully virtualized and sandboxed private cloud environment where students learn the basics of network, host, and web application security. The lab is remotely accessible to students enrolled in cybersecurity courses.
The cybersecurity lab is located in Room 204 Express Scripts Hall. It is a state of the art facility capable of holding 40 students. It boasts of fully modular furniture to facilitate student reconfiguration and collaboration. It has three plasma screens for projecting and also provides a dedicated corner for student exercises for computer forensics and other hands-on activities. Students can relax on the comfortable chairs, grab a book, or borrow some hardware to build their own practice setups.
The lab also hosts its own servers configured to provide a self-service private cloud for students and faculty. The private cloud allows students to fully experience cloud computing and, more importantly, create test/practice labs of their own choosing. Faculty and students also have access to scalable compute resources and ready-to-use virtual machine images customized to carry out a variety of tasks.
Located in 321 Express Scripts Hall (ESH), is equipped with a server machine, personal workstations, and a Raspberry PI testbed. The NetSyS lab is available for cybersecurity researchers (BS, MS, and PhD students). Currently the lab members consist of three research faculty as well as 3 PhD, 2 MS, and 1 BS students working on different research areas related to cybersecurity and networking. Students are fully or partially funded by NSF, NASA, and internal UMSL research funds.
