The talks will cover a broad and diverse range of topics ranging from examining future trends in computer security to understanding cybersecurity within the federal government. Exciting new research in various computer security mechanisms and systems for securing cyber spaces and data will also be presented.
Ransomware has been the talk of the security industry in the past year. While a significant threat, this obsessive focus threatens to obscure other important changes in the threat landscape. This talk will give an overview of the threat landscape, including the insecurity of IoT, the world’s most famous phishing attack and how attackers have shifted tactics. We’ll look at statistics from the Internet Security Threat Report to see where the threat landscape is and speculate on where its going.
The Internet of Things (IoT), where all kinds of devices – from public infrastructure to wearables are being equipped with “smarts” and are being wirelessly connected, holds great promise to improve health, safety, and productivity in our society. However, the success of IoT is directly dependent on our ability to provide the right level of security and privacy, because the potential consequences of successful attacks could impact human lives and safety and cause death and destruction, directly or indirectly. If, for example, vehicles or medical devices are remotely taken over by malicious attackers, people could be injured or killed by someone pushing a button from anywhere on the Internet. This talk describes the challenges and potential solutions for security and privacy in the emerging IoT that are very different from those of traditional IT systems, and outlines the research needed to achieve a trustworthy and sustainable Internet of Things.
The upcoming 5G technology promises to deliver three orders of magnitude higher speed, lower than 1 millisecond air latency, and at least 99.99% reliability. However, its security aspect remains a mystery. On one hand, the current 4G already incorporates multiple security fences to protect the infrastructure and the end users. It thus seems to have little to add to 5G security. On the other hand, new attacks and novel security mechanisms keep emerging from the research community. In this talk, I’ll share my experiences with research on 4G network security, including both learnt lessons and gained insights. I will finally share some research topics I feel are important to the upcoming 5G technology.
This talk examines the evolution of “Trust” in the cyber space. From the very beginning of the Internet, humans have struggled with how to trust in the digital world. Neuroscience studies are gradually uncovering clues as to how our brains process visual and other digital cues. Today we have fairly effective tools to separate humans from digital entities and test trustworthiness of certain entities, but we are wholly unprepared for a world when a digital entity passes the Turing test. This talk takes us through the concept of trust, how our brains process trust, and how we may arrive to decision making based on trust when it is not possible to tell humans and bots apart.
Cyber-attackers have taken on new and dangerous threat vectors to steal and compromise government and company owned secrets. The sheer volume and velocity of threats have outpaced the ability for security teams to detect them. The economic model is upside-down as the demand for cybersecurity professionals outstrips the supply of qualified personnel to hunt and kill the activity of bad actors after valuable digital assets. The explosion of mobile devices, cloud compute, self-driving cars and IoT will render billions of endpoints and zettabytes of data (one trillion gigabytes of data) that must be safeguarded. By using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) patterns instead of signatures, it is possible to predict hacker’s patterns and attack methods. AI can automate inspection, detection and remediation of nefarious actions to close the dwell time windows that plague any organization with top secret or classified digital assets that have left the building.