Preparing To Defeat Next-Gen Cybercriminals
by Matthew Schehl, Naval Postgraduate School August
18, 2019
Inside the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy (GSBPP)
at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), Noni Jones is an
administrative whiz. By day, the modest intern with a kind
disposition deftly navigates the Defense Travel System, the
military’s behemothic travel organization, to greatly ease the
burden on university faculty.
Yet with Jones, there is more
than meets the eye.
Outside of NPS, she is a graduate student at the nearby
Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS), where she
prepares for a future of deftly defeating a new generation of cyber
criminals and money-laundering masterminds.
May 1, 2019 - NPS Graduate
School of Business and Public Policy intern Noni Jones
prepares to take on a new generation of cybercriminals
through her graduate studies at nearby Middlebury Institute.
(U.S. Navy photo by Khaboshi Imbukwa, Naval Postgraduate
School)
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“My specialization is the nexus between financial crimes and
cybersecurity,” she said. “I’m really interested in the economics of
illicit trade and how that affects everything from national security
to quality of life and loss of industry. When it comes to data
protection and economic espionage, it’s just like the Wild West out
there and is so incredibly intriguing.”
Jones’ passions were
revealed to the world in March when she and three other MIIS
students banded together to react to a devastating cyber attack on
the United States on the scale of 9/11 or a ‘Cyber Pearl Harbor,’ a
notional scenario presented at the Atlantic Council’s intense Cyber
9/12 Strategy Challenge competition in Washington, D.C.
The
MIIS team placed second - only behind the Air Force Academy – out of
47 teams from such esteemed universities as Brown, Columbia, Duke,
Georgetown, Stanford, Tufts and the other service academies.
“That competition was fierce!” Jones recounted. “First, we had to
write a policy memo and present it, then go on to the next round, 10
hours overnight. We literally didn’t sleep at all.”
“The
scenario kept changing as one moment you learn the Russians are
involved, then its Hezbollah operating out of Venezuela; how do you
react to that?” she continued. “A lot of it was focused on the
interconnectivity of government agencies and how you would use a
particular agency to employ X, Y or Z.”
Yet the MIIS team
persisted through the epic encounter and emerged as one of the best.
Jones chalks up their success to the expertise of her all-women
team, which they dubbed “MIISattribution 2.0.”
“To be able to
bring our vastly different skills together cohesively and not want
to kill each other at four o’clock in the morning was really great,”
she said. “Things didn’t always go perfectly, but it was just water
off the duck’s back: we just kept moving, kept tracking, and I think
that reflected really well on us.”
When asked how she
acquired her particular powers, Jones did not blink.
“The
Naval Postgraduate School!” she declared. “I feel like it’s this
crown jewel of Monterey, like I’m part of something that’s actually
producing something really cool.”
Jones has interned at NPS
for the last two years, but her NPS roots date all the way back to
her childhood. Her father, an Army pilot, attended NPS as an
aerospace engineering graduate student in the 90s and would often
bring her to school.
“It was an insanely beautiful campus,”
she mused, recalling the first time she stepped foot onto NPS.
“Looking out over the garden when the setting sun hits it, just had
this … glint to it; it took my breath away.”
Since then,
Jones traveled far and wide as a self-professed “military kid,”
moving through the Marshall Islands, Washington, D.C., San Diego,
and then San Francisco State University, where she studied
international relations.
In June 2017, Jones returned to NPS
to begin an internship through the Office of Naval Research’s Naval
Research Enterprise Internship Program (NREIP), working with NPS’
Global Education Community Collaboration Online (ECCO) to model
terrorist financing networks.
After completing her
undergraduate degree, she then simultaneously enrolled in MIIS and
the federal government's Pathways internship program to begin work
at NPS’ GSBPP.
“I’m essentially a travel clerk, but I’m
getting the opportunity to learn how the government works and how to
operate within it, hopefully to work in public service in the
future,” Jones noted. “I’m so glad I’m here; I feel like I’m part of
this greater community.”
The creative, innovative and
pragmatic ties that bind the NPS community together have awakened in
Jones a sense of purpose and an awareness of her own capabilities,
she said.
For example, knowing her affinity for
cryptocurrency, NPS professors regularly pop by her office with a
book to loan her or to engage in insightful conversations about
blockchains. The meaningful impact this has had on Jones cannot be
overstated.
And Jones is just getting started. She has an
internship lined up this summer as an anti-money laundering
specialist with a major investment banking firm ahead of her Spring
2020 graduation from MIIS. And she will do so armed with the
knowledge, skills and abilities earned through her hard work and
engagement with the NPS community.
“I’ve just made so many
connections with people at NPS who I feel are really excited to help
me get off the ground,” she said.
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