Category: Upcoming Events

SCP Seminal Talk
Presented by the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy

Oct. 14, 2021 | 11 a.m. EDT

Title: Trustworthy Cyber-Physical Critical Infrastructures via Physics-Aware and AI-Powered Security

Abstract: Critical cyber-physical infrastructures, such as the power grid, integrate networks of computational and physical processes to provide people across the globe with essential functionalities and services. Protecting these critical infrastructures’ security against adversarial parties is a vital necessity because the failure of these systems would have a debilitating impact on economic security, public health and safety. Our research aims at provision of real-world solutions to facilitate the secure and reliable operation of next-generation critical infrastructures. This requires interdisciplinary research efforts across adaptive systems and network security, cyber-physical systems, and trustworthy real-time detection and response mechanisms.

In this talk, I will focus on real past and potential future threats against critical infrastructures and embedded controllers, and discuss the challenges in design, implementation and analysis of security solutions to protect cyber-physical platforms. I will introduce novel classes of working systems that we have developed to overcome these challenges. In particular, I will present our solutions for security verification of cyber-physical controllers for safe power grid and avionics operations. I will review our results to protect additive manufacturing and 3D printer security to ensure structural integrity of the ultimate printed objects. Finally, I will briefly talk about our recent efforts in security monitoring of the controller side-channel signals for online attack detection purposes.

Bio: Saman Zonouz is an Associate Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Rutgers University. His research focuses on security and privacy research problems in cyber-physical systems including the attack detection and response capabilities using techniques from systems security, control theory and artificial intelligence. His research has been awarded by Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), NSF CAREER Award in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Significant Research in Cyber Security by the National Security Agency (NSA), and Faculty Fellowship Award by Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). He was invited to co-chair the NSF CPS PI Meeting as well as the NSF CPS Next Big Challenges Workshop in 2021. Saman has served as the chair and/or program committee member for several conferences (e.g., IEEE Security and Privacy, CCS, NDSS, DSN, and ICCPS). Saman obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011.

Website: https://www.ece.rutgers.edu/Zonouz

Hosted by: Wenke Lee, Professor, Executive Director of IISP, and John P. Imlay Jr. Chair in Software

Friday, April 23, 2021 | 12 – 1 pm | REGISTER NOW

Kevin Hutto
Ph.D. Student – Georgia Tech ECE

Co-sponsored by the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the Institute for Information Security and Privacy

Abstract:

Embedded systems in physically insecure environments are subject to additional security risk via capture by an adversary. A captured microchip device can be reverse engineered to recover internal buffer data that would otherwise be inaccessible through standard IO mechanisms. We consider an adversary who has sufficient ability to gain all internal bits and logic from a device at the time of capture as an unsolved threat. In this talk we present a novel sensing architecture that enhances embedded system security by randomly encoding sensed values. We randomly encode data at the time of sensing to minimize the amount of plaintext data present on a device in buffer memory. We encode using techniques that are unintelligible to an adversary even with full internal bit knowledge. The encoding is decipherable by a trusted home server, and we show an architecture to perform this decoding. Our experimental results show the proposed architecture meets timing requirements needed to perform communications with a satellite utilizing short-burst data, such as in remote sensing telemetry and tracking applications.

Speaker Bio:

Kevin Hutto is a PhD student at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the school of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Before starting graduate school he spent five years in the US Navy serving as an officer in the engineering department on a nuclear submarine. As a student at Georgia Tech he has been part of Dr. Mooney’s Hardware/Software Codesign for Security group, working to improve security in areas historically overlooked.

Date(s): March ???, 2021 | Virtual – Register for free

The Georgia Cybersecurity and Privacy Roadmap Taskforce presents:

The Georgia Cybersecurity and Privacy Roadmap Taskforce (GCRT), organized by University System of Georgia, will serve to create and execute a strategic action plan that can be implemented across public and private education systems, including K-12, technical colleges and university programs.

This virtual workshop includes panelists from a broad cross-section of education areas in the state and will offer practitioners the chance to collaborate and share perspectives about establishing a statewide education program to meet the growing demand for cybersecurity talent.

Currently, the Georgia education system is not producing enough qualified cyber-science and privacy professionals to fill the growing number of critical cybersecurity jobs within the state and close the workforce gap. The workshop will provide insights and critical knowledge about the many facets of Cybersecurity and Privacy that impact Georgia, other U.S. states, and nations across the globe.

PANELISTS: Practitioners and guests from K-12 STEM, University System of Georgia, Technical College System of Georgia, HBCUs, Georgia DoE, and others.

Areas we’ll explore during the virtual workshop:

• Assets and tools that are effective in knowledge development
• Building blocks required to scale programs across education and training
• Strategies to attract, afford or retain resources across the education eco-system
• Education and career-focused models
• Strategies to introduce cybersecurity and privacy early in the process
• Student population demographic and psychographic forecasts
• Retraining the workforce of the future

Georgia Tech is a key partner in the GCRT. Learn more about education and research in cybersecurity and privacy at Georgia Tech.