Cybersecurity clinics, like clinics in law and medicine, train university students to provide digital security assistance to outside organizations with limited resources. Cybersecurity clinics provide the students with valuable real-world experience while providing vital support to their public interest clients. Yet the process of starting and operating a cybersecurity clinic…
A new video published by the Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN) features Ann Cleaveland, CLTC’s Executive Director, and Lisa Ho, Academic Director of the School of Information’s Master of Information and Cybersecurity (MICS), sharing insights based on their experience from overseeing UC Berkeley’s Citizen Clinic, a trailblazing public…
A new article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, “Nonprofits Are at Risk of Cyberattacks. Here’s What You Need to Know,” spotlights CLTC and the Citizen Clinic, a trailblazing course through which students are trained to provide digital security assistance to client organizations.
As part of the 2021 CLTC Research Exchange, we convened a panel discussion to discuss the history and value of the public interest cybersecurity clinic model, through which students provide digital security assistance to under-resourced organizations. This article summarizes some of the key takeaways from the discussion.
Through the Citizen Clinic, students from the UC Berkeley School of Information’s Master of Information and Cybersecurity (MICS) degree program help public-serving organizations gain skills to protect themselves against malicious governments, powerful corporations, hate groups, and extremists.
For the second consecutive year, Craig Newmark Philanthropies has funded Citizen Clinic, a groundbreaking program at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC). This first-of-its-kind program trains UC Berkeley students to provide digital security assistance to activists, journalists, and advocacy organizations who may be subjected to phishing,…
Citizen Clinic, a groundbreaking program run by the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, partnered with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism in the fall of 2020 for a course that introduced advanced cybersecurity training as a core element of professional journalism instruction for first-year graduate students.
This report, “An Evaluation of Online Security Guides for Journalists,” posits that a key reason why journalists do not take sufficient action to protect themselves online is that there is an overwhelming amount of security advice on the internet, most of which is difficult for journalist-readers to understand or translate into practice, and difficult for the guides’ authors to keep up to date. Authored by Kristin Berdan, a fellow at the Citizen Clinic and research fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, the paper is based upon an analysis that included a review of 33 online security guides available on the public internet that are geared toward journalists. The paper concludes with recommendations to make guides and security education of journalists overall more effective.
A recent episode of The Edge, a podcast produced by California magazine (and the Cal Alumni Association), showcased the work of the Citizen Clinic, through which UC Berkeley students help organizations with limited resources to defend themselves online.
“Digital Safety Technical Assistance at Scale,” a report by Sean Brooks, Director of the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity’s Citizen Clinic program, explores the opportunities and challenges of expanding the digital safety technical assistance resources available to civil society organizations. The report draws in part upon lessons learned from the first two years of operating Citizen Clinic, a first-of-its-kind program that engages interdisciplinary teams of UC Berkeley students to provide digital safety services to politically targeted civil society organizations.
On February 11, 2020, the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity hosted a panel discussion featuring Daniel Kobei of the Ogiek Peoples’ Development Programme (OPDP), a Kenya-based non-governmental organization working to support the rights of the indigenous Ogiek community; Jemimah Kerenge, Director of Enkishon Indigenous Initiative, which helps Maasai communities in Kenya to acquire social and economic equality; and Casey Box, Director of Land is Life, a global support organization for indigenous communities around the world.
Citizen Clinic, a unique program launched two years ago at UC Berkeley, received an infusion of grant support from Craig Newmark Philanthropies to expand and refine its unprecedented work training students to provide digital safety assistance for politically targeted organizations, and creating new pathways for women in cybersecurity careers. The…
CLTC has launched a new “publication” on Medium, the popular blogging platform. Designed to be a more informal outlet for our communications, the CLTC Bulletin features news, research and opinions from CLTC staff and researchers. Check it out at https://medium.com/cltc-bulletin.
The Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity is pleased to announce that Kristin Berdan will be joining our team as a Fellow. Kristin most recently served as lead cybersecurity counsel at Google. As a CLTC Fellow, Kristin will bring her rich experience to CLTC’s Citizen Clinic, which trains UC Berkeley students to help politically targeted organizations defend themselves against online threats. We asked her a few questions about her past work and her goals in working with CLTC.
On May 9, three teams of undergraduate and graduate students from diverse disciplines—including computer science, information management, economics, and law—delivered final presentations about their work with Citizen Clinic, an initiative launched within the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity to provide technical assistance to organizations that are vulnerable to cyberattacks for political…
On February 19, Sean Brooks, CLTC Research Fellow and Director of the Citizen Clinic, presented a webinar entitled “Cybersecurity in Low-Risk Organizations: Understanding Your Risk and Making Practical Improvements.” A total of 140 people participated in the session, which was presented in collaboration with TechSoup. In the webinar, Brooks introduced basic…
The Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity has launched a new public interest cybersecurity clinic dedicated to providing services to politically vulnerable organizations—including media outlets, human rights groups, and non-government organizations—that are at risk of cyberattacks. Similar to public-interest clinics in law and medicine, the “Citizen Clinic” will train teams of students to provide assistance to organizations that face online threats from governments, hate groups, and other politically motivated adversaries.