Craig Newmark Philanthropies Funds New Cybersecurity Clinic at NYU to Defend Under-Resourced Nonprofits, Schools, and Community Organizations from Cybercrime

A gift from Craig Newmark Philanthropies will establish the NYU Cybersecurity Clinic at the NYU Center for Cybersecurity (CCS). The clinic will deliver free, hands-on cybersecurity support to the nonprofits, community health clinics, shelters, legal aid services, K–12 schools, and small organizations that increasingly find themselves on the front lines of cybercrime while lacking adequate resources to defend themselves. The clinic will empower these organizations to improve their cyber resiliency with technology and governance strategies, training, and tools, and public-private information sharing.

“You can’t separate cybersecurity tools and platforms from the organizational and legal risk that come with cyber attacks, and the organizations we will serve can’t afford to hire many different kinds of experts,” said Damon McCoy, co-director of the CCS and professor of computer science and engineering, whose research on the economics of cybercrime has earned an IEEE Security and Privacy Test of Time Award and who coleads the multi-university Cybersecurity for Democracy project. "By pairing engineering students with law students under faculty supervision, the clinic will deliver the kind of integrated, practical defense these organizations actually need, while training a generation of cybersecurity professionals to consider technology, legal, and policy implications from day one.”