Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Two Recent News Items Underscore CyLab's Vital Role In Contributing to the Future of Cyber Security and Privacy.


Two recent news items underscore CyLab's vital role in contributing to the future of cyber security and privacy.

CyLab Researchers Work To Make Commercial Technologies Secure for Defense Department 


Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University CyLab and the University of Pennsylvania have received a four-year, $3.9 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to improve the security of commercial technologies used by the military.

“We are studying how to improve the security for commercial-off-the-shelf  (COTS) technology that remains vulnerable to attack from latent vulnerabilities or hidden malicious codes,” said CyLab researcher David Brumley, the Gerard G. Elia Career Development Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Brumley is widely regarded for his cutting-edge contributions to addressing the challenges associated with malware.

Full story


CyLab Joins Army Research Lab Funded Cyber Security Alliance 

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have joined with the Army Research Laboratory and academic partners in a new collaborative research alliance to develop a new science of how to make security-relevant decisions in cyberspace.

The five-year funding for the core and enhanced program is $23.2 million, with an additional $25 million for the optional five-year extension -- a potential total of $48.2 million over the 10-year collaboration ...

The alliance will focus on: detecting adversaries and attacks in the cyberspace; measuring and managing risk; and altering the environment to achieve best results at the least cost. A fourth area, developing models of human behaviors and capabilities that enable understanding and predicting motivations and actions of users, defenders and attackers, will be integrated into the first three areas.
Cranor, director of the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory, said the CMU researchers will work in all of the areas, but will focus especially on psychosocial activities.

Full story



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Wednesday, November 6, 2013

CyLab Chronicles: CyLab Leans Forward In Its Tenth Annual Partners Conference


The 2013 Annual CyLab Partners Conference was held October 1st and October 2nd, on the main campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.
2013 CyLab Partners Conference

For many of us working in and with CyLab it was a particularly poignant one.

It marked the tenth anniversary of this world class cyber security and privacy research program.

And for those who know what to look for, there were numerous indicators that the program's next ten years will be even more impactful and contribute even more to the common good.

I say "for those who know what to look for" because in some important ways what makes a CyLab Partners Conference successful is the polar opposite of what makes one of the major industry events (e.g., Black Hat Briefings or the RSA Conference) successful. One of the vital indicators of success for Black Hat Briefings or the RSA Conference is how many thousands of people attend. Conversely, one of the vital indicators of success at a CyLab Partners Confernece is the ratio of CyLab faculty to partners personnel in attendance. Scanning the room during lunches and dinners at this year's Partners Conference, you could see CyLab faculty and partners personnel seated together at every table, sharing invaluable insights and eagerly sought perspectives on emerging trends, perennial challenges and evolving technologies.

Nineteen CyLab researchers presented reports on their latest work, across a broad spectrum of cyber security and privacy issues, from Software Security to Mobility, from Usable Privacy and Security to the Security of Cyber-Physical Systems, from Formal Method to Internet Architecture, from Business Risks and Economic Implications to Trustworthy Computing Devices and Platforms. In addition to the time to engage in meaningful diaogue with CyLab faculty, attendees also got to engage many CyLab graduate students during a poster session in which this next generation displayed their projects.
Student Posters at 2013 CyLab Partners Conference

Sending key members of your security and privacy teams to immerse themselves in this two-day event is a powerful and exclusive benefit of CyLab partnership. But the opportunity to draw on the richness of what's shared at the Partners Conference doesn't end when the conference itself ends. Because each of these events is now archived online and accessible via the Partners Portal, another exclusive benefit of CyLab Partnership. In these archives, you will find videos of the faculty presentations, and the presentations themselves, as well as .pdfs of the graduate students' posters. This archive enables our partners to share the contents with the rest of their security and privacy team members, at convenient times and without incurring the cost of travel, etc. It also allows those team members returning from the Partners Conference to do more than simply refer to a few scribbled notes as they integrate what they have taken in.


Although the full archive of Partners Conference content is accessible only to CyLab Partners, every year, we make a few select videos publicly available via our YouTube Channel just to encourage dialogue and raise awareness.

This year's publicly available videos include a sampler with six brief excerpts from presentations, and full-length videos of four presentations: