Internships

The hands on experience

The OCSC backs its vision through its delivery of cyber security related internships to work on partner projects and other various opportunities as they arise.

To date, the OCSC has worked on projects with international partners such as the Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Association (APTLD), nation partners for CMM related desktop research, and more locally with AISA, RMIT University and the Centre for Innovative Industries Economic Research (CIIER) and NESTA (UK). In September 2021, the OCSC recruited over 15 current students as casual staff members to work on these projects and come to us from one of the eight member universities.

Current Projects

Building cyber capacity

Each project is specific to filling a need. Whether it is an internal scoping exercise, or a project working with external stakeholders, they all have one objective in common: cyber security capacity building. These Victorian university talent outputs are the building blocks that add to the efficacy in reaching OCSC’s mission to ‘work at the forefront of research to strengthen cyber security capacity and maturity, and to build contextualised digital resilience in Australia and in the wider Pacific region’.

Project 1

The International Cyber Operating Environment and Donor Analysis

 

 
The international cyber security capacity building environment is a complex matrix to navigate. With new organisations on-boarding to meet the growing list of challenges to address rising cyber related safety and security issues, the OCSC has invested in a deep dive to better understand the donor stakeholders and their policies, their synergy with the OCSC vision, and with the aim to better understand the international operating environment as a whole being the funders, the implementers, and the coordinators.

The project team:

  • Mr. Joe Fulwood – University of Melbourne

  • Ms. Jaime Morrison – University of Melbourne

  • Ms. Diana Lautenbach – Swinburne University

Project 2

Australian and Pacific Region Cyber Capacity Building Gap Analysis

In response to the Cyber and Critical Technology Cooperation Program call for views, this research project will conduct a cyber capacity building gap analysis of the Australian and wider Pacific region to inform a submission to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade proposing potential solutions to the identified opportunities and challenges.

The project team:

  • Jaskirat Sandhu – Monash University

  • Chao Cheng – Monash University

Project 3

CIIER and NESTA Digital Cities Pilot Project

This project will facilitate the placement of several OCSC member university students as interns, with the OCSC and the CIIER and NESTA (UK) partnership conducting a pilot research project to adapt the Australian Digital Cities Index (ACDI) and the European Digital Cities Index (EDCI) methodology in a developing economy environment.

The pilot research project will identify synergy, duplications, and unique indicators from the ACDI and EDCIs as compared with the Cyber Security Maturity Model for Nations (CMM), to ensure that the Index has specific and beneficial application to developing economies.

Further, it will build upon the findings of the CMM, to identify the macro and micro economic advantages and limitations, with a view to identifying pathways for digital economic investment and skills enhancement.

The project team:

  • Harith Morawakage – Monash University

  • Adelaide Pope – University of Melbourne

  • Tia Brullo – Monash University

Project 4

OCSC Education Program

This project comprises of 3 phases.

Phase 1 will assess the current educational operating environment and its offerings for short courses, industry training and micro-credentials that offer technical cyber security courses, cyber security policy, regulation and awareness for governments and other industry groups including effective cyber security management. The research will establish a definitional status to identify what courses and curriculum are in scope for the purposes of the audit.

Phase 2 of the project will be an assessment of courses offered in the Pacific region and will include any Dimension 3 recommendations stemming from the CMM.

Phase 3 of the project will consolidate phase 1 and 2 of the project and using evidence-based findings propose to develop multiple short-courses as pilot programs to be deployed and promoted nationally and abroad.

  • Meredith Jones

Project 5

Cyber Security Winter School

OCSC, RMIT University and Australian Information Security Association (AISA) worked together to create, coordinate, and facilitate the ‘Cyber Security Winter School’.

In August 2021 five seminars were held in a span of one week. EOIs were sought from academics to present at the Winter School on an area of cyber security speciality with attendees from students from multiple universities, industry professionals, government representatives and other cyber security researchers.

The project team:

  • Professor Matt Warren

  • Professor Iqbal Gondal

  • A/Professor Paul Pang

Research and Project Team

Scalable Research Capacity

The OCSC research and project team staff are there ready to be deployed on a diverse number of projects: internships and internal research projects, CMM desktop research, submission research and writing, expert advice to national governments and other activities as demand driven opportunities arise.