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To learn more about the Summit, go to: https://trustedci.org/summit
Monday, May 12, 2025
2025 NSF Cybersecurity Summit Topics and Travel Plans
Friday, May 9, 2025
2025 Trusted CI Student Program Cohort Announced
The Trusted CI Student Program provides undergraduate and graduate students with hands-on experience, mentorship, and opportunities to learn how to build a secure and resilient digital future. Our program allows them to connect with the nation’s leading cybersecurity experts and equips them with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in the increasingly critical field of cybersecurity.
We are pleased to announce the 2025 Trusted CI Student Program cohort. Over the next six months, our students will learn about essential cybersecurity topics from Trusted CI experts. They will attend bi-monthly webinars from May to October, covering cybersecurity topics, soft skills, and career prep. This year’s cohort includes graduate students with interests in financial security, risk assessment, governance policy, and high performance computing. Read more about their backgrounds and what they hope that they will learn during their time with Trusted CI:
Kofoworola Idowu is a graduate student in cybersecurity at Yeshiva University, passionate about protecting digital assets and staying ahead of emerging threats. With a strong foundation in systems administration, risk assessment, and vulnerability management, she is excited to bring her skills and enthusiasm to the Trusted CI Student Program and contribute to its vibrant community. When she is not diving into the world of threat analysis and security protocols, you can find her trying out new hobbies or dancing. She is looking forward to collaborating, learning, and growing with like-minded individuals.
Trina Locklear is a doctoral student in the Computer Science department at The University of Alabama. She is also a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. Her research interests include software security in high performance computing. She is a former GAANN fellow and intern at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She loves to bake and southern pound cake is her speciality.
Konstantin Metz is a graduate student in cybersecurity at the University of Central Florida, where he is pursuing an M.S. in cybersecurity and privacy as a CyberCorps Scholarship for Service recipient. His academic research centers on human-computer interaction, with a focus on dark patterns and digital accessibility for individuals with vision impairments. He holds a Bachelor of Science in information technology with a minor in cybersecurity and strategic communications within public relations from Nova Southeastern University. Metz has held technical and analytical roles in both the U.S. government and private sector, concentrating on incident response, cloud security, and systems administration. A bilingual speaker of German and English, he is a prospective Ph.D. student, whose research interests include governance, risk and compliance, cybersecurity policy and law, and the implementation of cloud infrastructure. In his free time, he enjoys exploring emerging technologies in health care, supporting his communities, cooking, and traveling.
Friday, May 2, 2025
Trusted CI Webinar: Conducting Responsible Human-Centered AI Research, Monday May 19th @ 10am Central
Clemson University's Bart Knijnenburg is presenting the talk, Conducting Responsible Human-Centered AI Research, on Monday May 19th at 10am, Central time.
Please register here.
With the recent rise of LLMs, it becomes increasingly possible (and necessary) to conduct human-subjects studies with AI tools. However, integrating AI in human-subjects research raises concerns about participant privacy, safety, and the confidentiality of research data. These concerns are exacerbated by the fact that many AI researchers have limited experience with human-subjects research, and most ethics review boards (e.g. IRBs) have little knowledge about AI.
In this talk, I present findings from a series of investigations into human-centered AI research studies: our team systematically reviewed AI-related studies published at the ACM SigCHI conference, we interviewed researchers who conducted human-subjects studies with LLMs, and we conducted a scenario-based study to unpack study participants' opinions about AI-based research.
We find that (1) many papers lack important details about basic study parameters, (2) researchers often fail to disclose the use of LLMs to research participants, and (3) participants are sensitive to study parameters like anonymization, data retention and consent, but are unaware of the threats of third-party data sharing and of data leakage through model training. I will discuss these findings, and more, during the talk.
Speaker Bio:
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Join Trusted CI's announcements mailing list for information about upcoming events. To submit topics or requests to present, see our call for presentations. Archived presentations are available on our site under "Past Events."
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Trusted CI Member Spotlight: Rick Wagner
Rick Wagner is the Chief Technology Officer of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), a facility based at UC San Diego.
Rick has been interested in many topics, including astrophysics, high performance computing, and cybersecurity. But, over time, he’s learned that he’s got one real passion: understanding how researchers use technology to achieve their research goals. He’s been a part of Trusted CI since 2021, when he served as a Trusted CI Fellow. We recently talked with Rick to learn more about his professional journey and work with Trusted CI’s programs.
How do you become the chief technology officer for a supercomputer center? Rick laughs and replies, “You do that by studying astrophysics and being very, very good with computers." He started by attending San Diego Mesa Community College, where he discovered an initial interest in physics. At UC San Diego, as an undergraduate, he worked with a professor who became his research advisor. From there, Rick became interested in studying turbulence in outer space. "That meant I had to do a lot of data analysis and parallel computing,” Rick explains, “I enjoyed working with the computers and those two things dovetailed.”
At the crossroads of cybersecurity and computer science
While in graduate school at UC San Diego, Rick started to work in the high performance computing clusters at SDSC. Eventually, he worked his way up and became the High Performance Computing System Manager. More and more, Rick was working closely with SDSC security engineers. While he enjoyed these interactions, he noticed that there was sometimes tension between his colleagues and the cybersecurity staff. Rick found that by bringing the security engineers into the systems management process, things got smoother, particularly by asking the security team to help manage the system configuration through the same DevOps process as the systems group.
After graduating, Rick also worked with the University of Chicago, as part of Globus, a research data management platform that connects over 150,000 users. In his new role, he helped groups develop portals. At one point, while working on building services for a federal agency, Rick saw cybersecurity professionals and research staff struggle to communicate once again. Suddenly, he had a realization. Both groups shared a common goal but viewed the project through two different lenses. “Somebody needed to be the mediator between those two groups,” Rick explains, “And that project really was what cemented my activity to be like, I know how to do this. I know how to align the cybersecurity and research needs, and communicate that in a way both groups can understand.” Rick saw a gap and realized he had the necessary skills to bridge the cybersecurity and research community.
Getting involved with Trusted CI
While at Globus, Rick started to hear about Trusted CI. Globus relied on CILogon, a service run by Jim Basney, and there were many overlaps between the communities (e.g., Trusted CI reviewed the Globus software stack).
After returning to work at UCSD, in 2020, his supervisor suggested Rick apply to the Trusted CI Fellows Program. Rick joined the 2021 cohort and quickly saw the value of working with a small, dedicated group. Rick notes that, because it was COVID times, the group grew very tight-knit and frequently met over ZOOM to talk about common interests and lessons learned. “The idea,” Rick observes, “is that [fellows] can reach out and talk to each other….[the fellowship] is a way to approach building groups of people to promote a goal, in this case, research cybersecurity.”
At the time, Rick was working on a NIH project that he brought with him from UChicago back to UCSD. As Rick worked through his project, he discovered the Trusted CI Framework, a comprehensive cybersecurity resource with templates and tools that helps organizations establish and refine their programs. “It gave me a way to communicate what the project I was working on was doing,” Rick recalls, “Where we were trying to fit around the expectations of security compliance from the federal agency.” Most importantly, Rick said, “the Trusted CI Framework enabled me to say, here is our path. It's achieving our goals, it's enabling security.”
Finding a place in a research community of experts
After Rick started participating as a Fellow, he continued to volunteer and work with the Trusted CI community. Between 2023 and 2024, he was a NSF Cybersecurity Summit Program Committee member. In that role, Rick helped to shape the NSF Cyber Security Summit’s program helping to select keynote speakers, review community proposals and make suggestions on the program flow.
He continues to be involved in the Trusted CI Fellows Program as a moderator of the yearly panel at the Summit. Rick also organizes workshops at the Summit. In one regular session, he collaborates with Mark Krenz on a combined tutorial and workshop about approaching security for Jupyter Notebooks. Rick fondly remembers the very first workshop, held at the Summit in San Diego in 2019. “The attendees were able to give us feedback,” he recalls, “Like, Hey, I'm a security engineer and users are asking for me to deploy this, and I don't understand how it works. And I'm like, oh, you're right. I could see how that's a challenge.”
Rick relishes every opportunity to gather user feedback. He loves learning more about how people work with technology and how to make the process even smoother. Every day, he’s motivated by helping people feel like they’re enjoying their interactions with software and computers. Rick has found a group of similarly excited researchers, software engineers, and cybersecurity experts at Trusted CI. Rick appreciates how Trusted CI offers webinars, tools, and resources like the Trusted CI Framework. “I think it's one of the better places to turn,” says Rick, “to stay abreast of what's going on with research cybersecurity, particularly the NSF landscape.”
Are you interested in keeping track of what’s new with Trusted CI? Sign up for our announcements listserv (announce+subscribe@trustedci.org) for regular updates on upcoming webinars and tools.
Friday, March 14, 2025
Trusted CI Webinar: The Operational Technology Procurement Vendor Matrix, Monday March 31st @10am Central
Please register here.
Operational Technology (OT), when installed on an organization's network, becomes part of the overall cyber attack surface for an organization. When procuring this OT, it is important for the purchasing organization to understand how it will integrate with the existing network and security controls as well as understand what new risks it might introduce. The Trusted CI Operational Technology Procurement Vendor Matrix (the Matrix) provides a prioritized list of questions for organizations to send to manufacturers and suppliers to try to get as much of this information as possible.
In this webinar, we will walk through what security issues impact OT, the role of procurement in mitigating security risks, our reasoning and process for developing the Matrix, and a walk through on how to use the Matrix at your organization. Questions and shared experiences with OT are encouraged.
TARGET AUDIENCE:
Organizational leadership, procurement department, IT, cybersecurity
The Matrix can be found at https://trustedci.org/ot-matrix
In this webinar, we will walk through what security issues impact OT, the role of procurement in mitigating security risks, our reasoning and process for developing the Matrix, and a walk through on how to use the Matrix at your organization. Questions and shared experiences with OT are encouraged.
TARGET AUDIENCE:
Organizational leadership, procurement department, IT, cybersecurity
The Matrix can be found at https://trustedci.org/ot-matrix
Speaker Bio:
Chief Security Analyst Mark Krenz is focused on cybersecurity operations, research, and education. He has more than two decades of experience in system, network administration, programming, and system security and has spent the last decade focused on cybersecurity. He also serves as the CISO of Trusted CI.---
Join Trusted CI's announcements mailing list for information about upcoming events. To submit topics or requests to present, see our call for presentations. Archived presentations are available on our site under "Past Events."
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Trusted CI 2024 Summit Report Now Available
Last October, Trusted CI convened the 2024 NSF Cybersecurity Summit. This yearly event provides a forum for National Science Foundation (NSF) scientists, researchers, cybersecurity, and cyberinfrastructure (CI) professionals and stakeholders to share effective technical practices and brainstorm solutions to everyday challenges facing cybersecurity environment professionals. When the community comes together for the Summit, they collectively learn from each other.
The 2024 Summit was held in person in Pittsburgh, PA, at Carnegie Mellon University. Over 250 individuals attended, including representatives of 44 NSF projects. Lorrie Faith Cranor, the Director and Bosch Distinguished Professor in Security and Privacy Technologies at the Cylab Security and Privacy Institute, delivered the keynote lecture and gave suggestions on how to develop the best cybersecurity practices for users.
During the four days of the Summit, attendees could choose from various workshops, training sessions, and seminars. These included topics such as:
- How to adopt the Trusted CI Framework
- How to apply Generative AI for cybersecurity defense
- How to manage cybersecurity and ransomware risks
Monday, March 10, 2025
Trusted CI and the Research Infrastructure Security Community Respond to NSF’s Draft Research Infrastructure Guide
Trusted CI, in collaboration with the Research Infrastructure Security Community (RISC), submitted comments to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) regarding Section 5.3 of NSF’s 2025 draft Research Infrastructure Guide (RIG). These comments offer the community’s perspective on the NSF’s proposed new guidance for Major Facilities and Mid-Scales on building their cybersecurity programs.
RISC is a community of practice built by Trusted CI for NSF-funded cybersecurity professionals. RISC is composed of graduates from the Trusted CI Framework Cohort Program, who continue to gather as a community to expand their cybersecurity knowledge, share experiences, and build relationships.
For more information, please contact us at info@trustedci.org.
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