Semester

Spring

Date of Graduation

2017

Document Type

Problem/Project Report

Degree Type

MS

College

Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

Department

Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

Committee Chair

Saiph Savage

Committee Co-Chair

Roy S. Nutter

Committee Member

Elaine M. Eschen

Abstract

Startups are innovative companies who have ideas for the betterment of the society. But, due to limited resources, and highly expensive testing procedures, they invest less time and money in securing their website and web applications. Furthermore, cyber security education lacks integrating practical knowledge with educational theoretical materials. Recognizing, the need to educate both startups and students about cyber security, this report presents Secure Startup - a novel system, that aims to provide startups with a platform to protect their website in a costeffective manner, while educating students about the real-world cyber skills. This system finds potential security problems in startup websites and provides them with effective solutions through a crowdtesting framework. Secure Startup, crowdsources the testers (security experts and students) of this system, through social media platforms, using Twitter Bots. The basic idea behind this report, is to understand, if such a system can help students learn the necessary cyber skills, while running successful tests and generating quality results for the startups. The results presented in this report show that, this system has a higher learning rate, and a higher task effectiveness rate, which helps in detecting and remediating maximum possible vulnerabilities. These results were generated after analyzing the performance of the testers and the learning capabilities of students, based on their feedback, trainings and task performance. These results have been promising in pursuing the system's value which lays in enhancing the security of a startup website and providing a new approach for practical cyber security education.

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