Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Student Program at the 2023 NSF Cybersecurity Summit

In October, we hosted our annual NSF Cybersecurity Summit, which was a hybrid event hosted at Berkeley Lab. Our student program welcomed nine students to attend the in-person training sessions, present posters, network with fellow attendees, and introduce themselves to our community. We also matched students with mentors to help facilitate networking opportunities.

We give special thanks to our mentors: Ishan Abhinit, Jim Basney, Phuong Cao, Eric Cross, Wei Feinstein, Mark Krenz, Jim Marsteller, Sean Peisert, Kelli Shute, and Susan Sons.

We asked the students to share their thoughts on their experiences at the Summit. Below are their responses. These statements have been lightly edited for clarity.

Chad Callegari, University of South Alabama:
My experience at the 2023 Trusted CI Cybersecurity Summit completely exceeded my expectations in the best ways possible. I had never before attended a conference before this event, and as a student it was initially intimidating to be in a new environment with professionals from the field. I quickly learned just how inviting everyone at the event was, and everyone quickly made the environment one that I could feel comfortable in. I was able to learn so many new things from the trainings that were put on, and meet so many great people both other students and professionals. The event allowed me to learn about the different opportunities that I had not ever known about before and I was also able to talk with many of these professionals about potential opportunities for the future. The event was a great success for me and I hope to participate in other Trusted CI events in the future!

Matheu Fletcher, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:
The summit was a great experience as my first real conference. My biggest personal takeaway was the friendliness and helpful nature of the community present. Similarly, the biggest technical aspect I learned from the event was gaining a better understanding of Zeek, along with various development tools I heard discussed that I can make use of to be more efficient in both work and personal projects. Additionally, I gained a better understanding of the ever-changing balance between creating and detecting AI generated texts.

Robert Johnson, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga:
I thoroughly enjoyed my experience at the NSF Summit cybersecurity conference held at UC Berkeley. Not only were the surroundings gorgeous, but the organizers and attendees were extremely inviting. The more experienced members went out of their way to speak to first-time attendees providing networking opportunities. I believe it is important for students to familiarize themselves with the experience of attending a professional development conference. I enjoyed many of the talks and remained engaged despite the topics being niche and specific to different areas of cybersecurity. I am grateful to be able to speak with people from a variety of institutions, businesses, and countries and exchange knowledge.

Kaneesha Moore, Mississippi State University:
As a rather curious yet reserved individual, I was delighted to have TrustedCI’s 2023 NSF Cybersecurity Summit as my first professional conference. The atmosphere felt welcoming and inviting, and one could feel the passion for cybersecurity in the air – as cliché as it sounds. The workshops were intriguing and encouraged hands-on participation from other attendees which reinforced the topics discussed during the sessions. It is hard to choose a favorite, but I really enjoyed the workshops on artificial intelligence/machine learning and intrusion detection topics – Zeek, deep machine learning intrusion detection for SCADA (and similar) systems, and tutorials on detecting deepfake messages. It felt like an educational getaway with like-minded individuals who wanted to share and gain knowledge. I thoroughly enjoyed my time, and I hope to attend next year’s conference!

Ololade Odunsi, University of New Haven:
Attending the 2023 NSF Cybersecurity Summit was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I had the opportunity to meet industry professionals who were open to speaking with students and peers about topics they were interested in. From being paired with a mentor, to learning hands-on cybersecurity workshops and listening to seminars - the summit could not have been more value packed. I especially enjoyed the opportunity to present my poster on my background and projects I have worked on to the attendees, who were attentive and supportive.

Henry Schmidt, University of Arkansas:
I had a great experience at the Trusted CI NSF Cybersecurity Summit. It was fantastic to see and talk to the wide array of individuals who came to the conference. There was a considerable variety of seminars, talks, and workshops to attend. I liked in particular the talk on deep learning IDS by Dr. Ismail from Tennessee Tech as well as the security log analysis workshop by Mark Krenz, Ishan Abhinit, and Phuong Cao. It was a pleasure to talk with the other students and professionals from around the world at the conference. Everyone was genuinely interested in the work other people were doing in the cybersecurity space. Thank you to everyone that stopped by my poster to talk with me about the work that CyberHogs is doing with RazorHack Cyber Challenge at the University of Arkansas! I look forward to reaching out to everyone and carrying these connections with me as I move forward in my academic and professional career.

The Student Program has continued to be a very rewarding experience for us. If you are interested in becoming a mentor next year, please contact us at summit@trustedci.org.

Monday, November 20, 2023

Trusted CI Webinar: Open Science Chain, Dec. 4th @11am Eastern

San Diego Supercomputer Center's Subhashini Sivagnanam is presenting the talk, Open Science Chain - Enabling Integrity and Metadata Provenance for Research Artifacts Using Open Science Chain, on December 4th at 11am Eastern time.

Please register here.

The envisioned advantage of sharing research data lies in its potential for reuse. Although many scientific disciplines are embracing data sharing, some face constraints on the data they can share and with whom. It becomes crucial to establish a secure method that efficiently facilitates sharing and verification of data and metadata while upholding privacy restrictions to enable the reuse of scientific data. This presentation highlights our NSF-funded Open Science Chain (OSC) project, accessible at https://www.opensciencechain.org. Developed using blockchain technologies, the OSC project aims to address challenges related to the integrity and provenance of research artifacts. The project establishes an API-based data integrity verification management service for data-driven research platforms and hubs, aiming to minimize data information loss and provide support for managing diverse metadata standards and access controls.

Speaker Bio:

Subhashini Sivagnanam is the manager of the Cyberinfrastructure Services and Solutions (CISS) group at the San Diego Supercomputer Center/ UCSD. Her research interests predominantly lie in distributed computing, cyberinfrastructure development, scientific data management, and reproducible science. She serves as the PI/Co-PI on various NSF/NIH projects related to scientific data integrity and developing cyberinfrastructure software.  Furthermore, she oversees the management of UC San Diego’s campus research cluster known as the Triton Shared Computing Cluster.

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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."

Monday, November 13, 2023

Thank You to Debra Chapman and Alec Yasinsac!

Since joining the Trusted CI team in 2021, Debra Chapman and Alec Yasinsac at the University of South Alabama have been leading Trusted CI’s transition to practice (TTP) efforts. Through their work, they have fostered connections between researchers and practitioners and led the creation of a suite of TTP resources based on best practices and successes. In 2023, they hosted two free TTP workshops for researchers and industry professionals to come together and discuss challenges, resources, and how to move forward with transitioning their research.

We thank Debra and Alec for their many contributions to the NSF TTP community and wish them all the best with their future endeavors!

Monday, November 6, 2023

Trusted CI members help Indiana local governments prevent cyber attacks

Trusted CI’s Craig Jackson and Ranson Ricks are leading an effort, called Cybertrack, to help local Indiana governments prevent cyber attacks. Cybertrack was initiated by the Indiana Office of Technology in partnership with cybersecurity experts from Indiana University and Purdue.

To accomplish this, they are relying on the Trusted CI Framework, which has been adopted by the state as part of its standard for local government cybersecurity. The Cybertrack team is expected to complete more than 300 assessments by 2026.

Read the full article published by Indiana University

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

MS-CC Cybersecurity Community of Practice

The Minority Serving - Cyberinfrastructure Consortium (MS-CC) is launching its Cybersecurity Community of Practice on October 10, 2023, from 2-3 p.m. ET. The community of practice will meet monthly, on the second Tuesday of every month. Jim Basney (Trusted CI) and Stephen Bollinger (North Carolina A&T State University) will be co-chairs.

This community of practice aims to create a supportive and collaborative space for faculty, researchers, staff, and students from minority serving institutions to continue their conversations around the topic of cybersecurity.

To participate in this and other MS-CC activities, please submit the MS-CC Participation Form.

Thursday, September 21, 2023

Zeek and Jupyter Full-Day Security Training at the 2023 NSF Summit

This year the Summit is pleased to partner with Zeek and Project Jupyter to offer full-day training and a workshop on Monday October 23, 2023. 

Zeek, an open source network security monitoring tool, will offer two full-day training sessions. “Hands-on Zeek Scripting” will walk attendees through the fundamentals of Zeek Scripting along with some practical exercises. “Intermediate to Zeek” will teach attendees how to set up their own Zeek cluster deployments in production together with all the cluster components and the new Zeek management framework.

Project Jupyter is an open-source project sponsored by the non-profit NumFOCUS,  that supports interactive data science and scientific computing. The “Jupyter Security Workshop” will expand on the current Jupyter security practices by focusing on the following near- and long-term goals: 

  • Bring together people interested in contributing to security in Jupyter.
  • A white paper on “Jupyter Security Best Practices”.
  • Summarizing Jupyter development practices that target security.
  • Recommendations for security governance within the Project Jupyter governance model.
  • Based on any security gaps in documentation, software, processes, or other areas, identify potential support mechanisms to address them.

All of these sessions will only be offered in-person. There is not a remote participation option and the sessions will not be recorded. More information on these and all of the Summit sessions can be found here.

Due to LBNL site access requirements, in-person registration is required by September 29.  The registration cut-off for inclusion in the Hotel Shattuck room block with the reduced rate is 5:00pm PST on Friday, September 22, 2023. 

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Trusted CI Webinar: Improving the Privacy and Security of Data for Wastewater-based Epidemiology, Sept. 25th @ 11am ET

Arizona State University's Ni Trieu is presenting the talk, Improving the Privacy and Security of Data for Wastewater-based Epidemiology, on September 25th at 11am Eastern time.

Please register here.

As the use of wastewater for public health surveillance continues to expand, inevitably sample collection will move from centralized wastewater treatment plants to sample collection points within the sewer collection system to isolate individual neighborhoods and communities. Collecting data at this geospatial resolution will help identify variation in select biomarkers within neighborhoods, ultimately making the wastewater-derived data more actionable. However a challenge in achieving this is the nature of the wastewater collection system, which aggregates and commingles wastewater from various municipalities. Thus various stakeholders from different cities must collectively provide information to separate wastewater catchments to achieve neighborhood-specific public health information. Data sharing restrictions and the need for anonymity complicates this process.

This talk presents our approaches to enabling data privacy in wastewater-based epidemiology. Our methodology is built upon a cryptographic technique, Homomorphic Encryption (HE), ensuring privacy. Additionally, we outline a technique to enhance the performance of HE, which could be of independent interest.

Speaker Bio:

Ni Trieu is currently an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University (ASU). Her research interests lie in the area of cryptography and security, with a specific focus on secure computation and its applications such as private set intersection, private database queries, and privacy-preserving machine learning. Prior to joining ASU, she was a postdoc at UC Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. degree from Oregon State University.

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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."