Bryan Cunningham’s vision, crafted over the past year to create one of the country’s top cybersecurity policy and prevention centers, is taking shape at the University of California-Irvine.
The Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute’s recently launched Cyber Victims Defense Clinic provides pro bono legal and technical assistance to underserved segments of the population, including the elderly, the poor and small businesses with limited resources.
The issue is personal for Cunningham, whose 82-year-old mother was a victim of a cybercrime a year before she died of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which causes massive memory loss, among other effects. She responded to several robocalls offering to monitor, protect and fix her computer problems for up to $50 per month. By the time Cunningham learned of the scams, she was losing several hundred dollars a month.
“This was one of the reasons I took the job,” said the national intelligence expert, who served as deputy legal adviser to Condoleezza Rice when she was national security advisor, and a six-year stint as a senior CIA officer and federal prosecutor in the Clinton administration.
Cunningham established partnerships for the clinic with the Orange County office of law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Irvine-based software security maker Cylance Inc.
Gibson Dunn cybersecurity partner Joshua Jessen will lead legal efforts, including helping victims with criminal and civil claims; litigation; and packaging cases for police departments.
“Gibson Dunn sees the clinic as an opportunity to help underserved populations who may be subject to cyberattacks, raise general awareness of cybersecurity, and help train the next generation of cybersecurity lawyers,” he told the Business Journal.
Cylance will teach students about the technical parts of an investigation, evidence handling, mitigating damage, cleaning infected devices, and preventative measures.
“We’re helping to get justice done,” said Cunningham, a founding partner of the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Cunningham Levy Muse, which has a Los Angeles office and has helped Fortune 500 companies and other global outfits comply with complex legal regulations under federal law, myriad state laws, and privacy and security requirements in the European Union and other overseas jurisdictions.
Related Missions
The clinic is one of several efforts under way at the institute to address one of the most pressing global challenges as consumer, business and infrastructure breaches become more common and destructive.
Others include the Cyber Attack Attribution Research Project, which aims to educate government and the private sector on attacks’ origins while establishing standards of proof under international law, and in U.S. criminal prosecutions, civil litigation and other contexts.
The Supply-Chain Security Research Project, among other goals, will explore the use of blockchain, a virtual ledger and currency technology that promises security, transparency, immutability and authenticity.
Its law enforcement training initiative, in conjunction with UCI’s Division of Continuing Education, has developed a one week, 40-hour course for detectives on investigating cybercrimes while protecting privacy and civil liberties. About 80 members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, OC district attorney’s office, and the L.A. police and sheriff’s departments have finished the program run at an L.A. sheriff’s training facility.
“Almost every crime is a cybercrime” today, said Cunningham, who wants to expand the program to other police agencies, as well as to prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges.
Cunningham, who has consulted for police departments for years, wrote the privacy training manual for the New York Police Department’s domain awareness system for lower Manhattan’s camera video network, which helped implicate New York and New Jersey bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami in the September 2016 attacks that injured 29 people.
Cunningham’s daughter, who attends college in New York, heard the blast two blocks away when the bomb exploded in the Chelsea neighborhood.
Cunningham has also consulted for the LAPD and the L.A. Sheriff’s Department on license plate reader policy and body cameras.
Eye on the Future
The idea for an institute with national scope was first suggested about two years ago by LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, who approached former UCI law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky. Chemerinsky recently took the same post at the University of California-Berkeley law school, but not before he worked with university executives to make the idea a reality.
Cunningham attended numerous advisory meetings before being persuaded to apply for the executive director position. He was hired about a year ago and brought an extensive resume to the post, which ultimately answers to UCI’s Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Science, the Henry Samueli School of Engineering, the schools of Law, Physical Sciences, Social Ecology and Social Sciences, and the Division of Continuing Education, as well as the chancellor and provost, all of which fund the institute.
Cunningham said he drafted significant portions of the Homeland Security Act and related legislation and helped move it through Congress. He was a principal contributor to the first National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, worked closely with the 9/11 Commission, and provided legal advice to President George W. Bush, Rice, the National Security Council, and other senior government officials on intelligence, terrorism, cybersecurity and related matters.
He was founding vice chairman of the American Bar Association Cyber Security Privacy Task Force and was awarded the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement for his work on information issues. He was the principal author of legal and ethics chapters in several cybersecurity textbooks.
His writing credits also include a pilot for “Project Mc2,” a Netflix series now in its fourth season that aspires to spur girls’ interest in science, technology, engineering and math.
The goal to reach young students is a key part of the cybersecurity institute’s efforts to boost expertise in coming years, a perennial concern of companies and government agencies.
The center has partnered with the Anaheim Union High School District, Santa Ana Unified School District, Cypress College and with to develop cybersecurity curricula for high school students, in hopes the exposure will inspire them to pursue careers in the field at community and four-year colleges.
“This a profession where we can demonstrably show there’s millions of jobs at the end of the road,” said Cunningham, who’s served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Biodefense Analysis, the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, and the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Cyber Security Task Force.
The UCI initiatives, combined with a burgeoning cluster of cybersecurity-related business, will further Orange County’s growing influence in the booming segment, according to Cunningham.
“I think we are well on our way to doing that.”
