Cybersecurity Institute at CICS Holding Events for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Massachusetts Cybersecurity Week
October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and the Cybersecurity Institute at the College of Information and Computer Sciences, UMass Amherst (CICS) will host four guest speakers this October from government, industry, and higher education to promote cybersecurity awareness.
On October 1, Dr. Arthur House, Chief Cyber Security Risk Officer for the State of Connecticut, presented his talk, “Cyber Threats: The State Fights Back,” on cyber threats facing individuals and governments, the business community, elections, and national security. On October 8, Dr. Markus Hofmann, a researcher at Bell Labs, will present “Reshaping Our Interaction and Communications,” his long-term vision for the future of human collaboration and the implications for security and privacy. On October 22, as a joint presentation with the CICS Rising Stars lecture series, Carnegie Mellon University doctoral candidate Pardis Naeini will explore consumer concerns and preferences on having personal data collected by the Internet of Things in her presentation, “Informing Privacy and Security Decision-Making in an IoT World.” Finally, a talk will be given by Dr. Reinier Broker from the Center for Communications Research, a non-profit which performs research in support of the National Security Agency’s mission in cryptology.
In addition to the talks, CICS professor and Cybersecurity Institute director Brian Levine will bring several UMass Amherst students to Washington, DC on October 18 during Massachusetts Cyberweek to spend the day with a group of security professionals—including agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation—as part of their studies through the National Science Foundation’s CyberCorps Scholarships for Service program.
The University of Massachusetts Cybersecurity Institute is a multi-disciplinary home for security research and education at UMass. The driving mission of the Institute is to advance Security for the Common Good. Researchers and educators that are a part of the Institute lead projects and courses that help society, including increasing privacy, protecting personal information, thwarting exploitation of the vulnerable, and increasing access to the Internet.
Brian Levine is director of the Cybersecurity Institute at UMass Amherst and a Professor in CICS. His research and teaching focus on security, privacy, and forensics in the context of mobile systems, cellular networks, and the Internet. Levine’s research is currently funded by the Department of Justice and the National Science Foundation.