Trusted CI at SFSCon 2021

SFSCon was on hiatus last year due to the pandemic, but it's back this year with a virtual format. SFSCon 2021, to be held November 5-7, will be the fourth annual cybersecurity training and professional development event organized by Cal Poly Pomona (CPP) for CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) students and alumni nationwide. This year SFSCon will use the U.S. Cyber Range for hands-on student training. Trusted CI will be providing Identity and Access Management training and Security Log Analysis training, as in previous years, with training materials updated for the virtual format.

Trusted CI at SFSCon 2019

Group Photo of SFSCon 2019 Participants

On September 27-29, Trusted CI participated in SFSCon 2019, the third annual cybersecurity training and professional development event at Cal Poly Pomona (CPP) for the CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) students and alumni nationwide. 105 student attendees traveled to California from 42 universities across the country for this event organized by CPP Professor Mohammad Husain. In 2017, Trusted CI helped organize the CPP-CTSC SFS Cyberinfrastructure Security Workshop, the first event in this SFSCon series.

This year, Trusted CI's Barton P. Miller and Elisa Heymann provided a Software Assurance training for the students, and Trusted CI's Jim Basney and John Zage provided an Identity and Access Management training. Ishan Abhinit and Zalak Shah (CACR) also provided a Security Log Analysis training, using training materials developed by Trusted CI.

From 45 student attendees in 2017 to 105 student attendees in 2019, SFSCon is a growing success. It’s great to see the SFS program supporting the development of the next generation cybersecurity workforce. Trusted CI is proud to have the Cal Poly Pomona Scholarship for Service project as one of our partners.

Trusted CI at the 2019 annual Great Plains Networks All-Hands Meeting May 21-23

Ishan Abhinit conducting log analysis exercise at GPN AHM 2019

Following on the successful workshops Trusted CI staff provided at the 2017 Great Plains Network All-Hands Meeting, The Trusted CI staff was invited back to the event in 2019 by GPN staff. Five members of the Trusted CI staff presented a series of three workshops from May 21st - 23rd at the 2019 Great Plains Networks All-Hands Meeting. The workshops covered log analysis, risk management for regulated data, and developing information security programs for research projects and facilities.

Building a NIST Risk Management Framework for HIPAA and FISMA Compliance - Wednesday, May 22 (Anurag Shankar & Ryan Kiser)
Anurag Shankar and Ryan Kiser led a workshop to prepare attendees to effectively leverage NIST’s risk management guidelines as a tool to address the increasingly heavy demands of regulated data on research workflows. They provided an overview of the requirements for handling different types of regulated data such as PHI and CUI as well as a unified risk-based methodology for adhering to these requirements.

Security Log Analysis - Wednesday, May 22 (Mark Krenz & Ishan Abhinit)
Mark Krenz and Ishan Abhinit presented a half day workshop on Security Log Analysis including a 45 minute exercise developed by fellow Trusted CI colleague Kay Avila. The hands on exercise involved performing analysis on an Apache web server log file to find attacks at 6 levels of difficulty. The workshop also covered important aspects of collecting, organizing and analyzing log files as well as provided specific techniques for finding different types of attacks. Real time polling was utilized as a method of helping enguage with attendees as well as gaining insight into community practices.


A Practical Cybersecurity Framework for Open Science Projects and Facilities- Thursday, May 23 (Bob Cowles)
Bob conducted a workshop to give attendees a foundation in what it means to have a basic, competent cybersecurity program for open science projects. In addition to lively discussion from the participants, the four pillars of the Trusted CI Framework were presented along with the sixteen “musts” that compose the core framework requirements. Participants were provided with the tools for building a cybersecurity program and encouraged to use a set of rational, evidence-based controls as a component of their program.

Left to right: Bob, Anurag, Ishan, Michael, Mark, Ryan

Attending the conference also allowed Trusted CI staff to meeting and provide less formalized cybersecurity discussion and consultation during social events at the conference. While visiting Kansas City, the Trusted CI team also had the opportunity to meet with Michael Grobe, who is a member of the distributed computing community and co-developer of Lynx, one of the first popular web browsers.

The materials presented by Trusted CI at the conference as well as others can be found on the Trusted CI website.

Trusted CI presenting at the Great Plains Network Annual Meeting (May 21 - 23)

Members of Trusted CI will be presenting three training sessions at the Great Plains Network (GPN)'s Annual meeting  in Kansas City, Missouri (May 21st - 23rd).

Bob Cowles  and Mark Krenz are presenting, "Developing Cybersecurity Programs for NSF Projects." This tutorial describes Trusted CI's Framework for cybersecurity programs to protect science projects

Mark Krenz and Ishan Abhinit are presenting, "Security Log Analysis." Participants will learn how to collect and analyze system logs to help detect security incidents.
     
Anurag Shankar and Ryan Kiser are presenting, "Building NIST Risk Management Framework for HIPAA and FISMA." This session will familiarize participants with how to tackle HIPAA, FISMA, and NIST 800-171, US regulations that affect research computing.

More details about the conference will be posted here at it becomes available.

Upcoming events featuring Trusted CI

Interested in the latest from Trusted CI? Want a chance to chat in person with us? Members of Trusted CI will be participating in a number of events over the next few months.

Internet2 Global Summit (March 5-8) in Washington, D.C.
The summit focuses on trust and identity; advanced networking; information security; and integrated solutions for research, scholarship and creativity. Von Welch will be presenting in the Executive Track on Tuesday on Cybersecurity for Open Science. On Friday Jim Basney and Von Welch will be co-presenting a talk with UC San Diego's Michael Corn "Strategies for Research Cybersecurity and Compliance from the Lab."

CENIC Annual Conference (March 18-20) in San Diego, CA.
The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) is hosting its annual conference bringing together participants from all education segments, research universities, public libraries, private sector technology businesses, public policy and government, and R&E partners. Von Welch will be presenting a talk on the Trusted CI framework.

ISGC 2019 (March 31-April 5) in Taipei, Taiwan.
The International Symposium on Grids and Clouds (ISGC) 2019 & Soundscape Conference is built around the FAIR concept -- data must be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable. The conference will bring together individual communities and national representatives to address this challenge. Von Welch will be giving a keynote address, "FAIR in an unfair world: cybersecurity, data breaches, data integrity, and open science."

WE-RIT Women in Engineering at RIT and Cybersecurity Research TTP (April 2-3) in Rochester, NY.
Florence Hudson will be at speaking at Rochester Institute of Technology at the WE-RIT event on April 2, and meeting with Cybersecurity Researchers April 2-3 to discuss how to accelerate cybersecurity research transition to practice (TTP) including business model development.

SIG-ISM/WISE Meeting (April 16-18) in Kaunas, Lithuania. 
The GÉANT Special Interest Group - Information Security Management (SIG-ISM) group and the Wise Information Security for Collaborating e-Infrastructures (WISE) are hosting joint meeting in Lithuania. The meeting aims to enhance the collaboration among large e-infrastructures and NRENs and their communities on handling security information. The groups will discuss their activities in the past few years, share the results and outcomes and tackle challenges together. Bob Cowles will be giving a talk on the new Trusted CI Framework.

IU Internet of Things Wearables in Motion Symposium (April 25-26) in Bloomington, IN.
The Indiana University School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Innovate Indiana, IU Research and Technology Corp., The Mill and Indiana IoT Lab, will host academic and industry experts to discuss wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT) including novel sensors and actuators, scalable and secure cyberinfrastructures, and more. Florence Hudson will be presenting with Mitch Parker from IU Health on Protecting Health Wearables from Cyber Attack.

EDUCAUSE Security Professional Conference 2019 (May 13-15) in Chicago, IL.
EDUCAUSE brings higher education security professionals together to network and discuss information security and privacy trends and current issues with peers and solution providers. Anurag Shankar is presenting a talk on securing workflows. Also, Trusted CI's partner project, the ResearchSOC, will be presenting a talk on helping security professionals support sponsored research projects. And Florence Hudson and cohorts will be presenting a birds-of-a-feather (BOF) session on cybersecurity needs and partnering with researchers to fill the gaps.

The Great Plains Network (GPN) Annual Meeting (May 21-23) in Kansas City, MO.
The meeting brings together advanced network and cyberinfrastructure users, information technology staff, network engineers, faculty members, researchers, and graduate students from leading Midwestern universities and higher education networks. Mark Krenz, Bob Cowles, Ishan Abhinit, Anurag Shankar, and Ryan Kiser will be presenting talks on security log analysis, developing cybersecurity programs, and the NIST framework for HIPAA and FISMA compliance. 

Training Workshop for Network Engineers and Educators on Tools and Protocols for High-Speed Networks (July 22 - 23) in Columbia, SC.
This free hands-on workshop provides cyberinfrastructure (CI) engineers with an introduction to tools and techniques for the design, implementation, and monitoring of high-throughput networks and science demilitarized zones (Science DMZs). Von Welch will be speaking at the workshop.

Trusted CI's Technology Transition to Practice (TTP) Workshop (June 19) in Chicago, IL.
The Cybersecurity TTP workshop is an opportunity for Cybersecurity researchers and practitioners to discuss the needs and gaps we can fill with cybersecurity research, and enjoy co-creation of plans on accelerating this valuable research to practice. Florence Hudson and fellow members of Trusted CI will be hosting the workshop. Apply to request an invitation here.

PEARC19 in (July 28 - August 1) in Chicago, IL.
PEARC19 will explore the current practice and experience in advanced research computing including modeling, simulation, and data-intensive computing. Abstracts are still under review. Trusted CI intends to present many things at this year's conference and will update the community as more information is available.

The 2019 NSF Cybersecurity Summit (October 15 - 17) in San Diego, CA.
The Summit is hosted by Trusted CI and welcomes cybersecurity practitioners, technical leaders, and risk owners from within the NSF Large Facilities and CI Community, as well as key stakeholders and thought leaders from the broader scientific and information security communities. The Summit includes training sessions, plenary session, and opportunities to network and socialize with peers.

Whether you are an operational security pro, high speed networking researcher, NSF PI, or identity management specialist; the coming months present some interesting opportunities to network and collaborate. We look forward to seeing you at these events.

CTSC Collaboration with NSF Campus Cyberinfrastructure and CyberTraining Projects

NSF's 2018 solicitation for Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CC*) projects states that the "Campus CI plan should address the campus-wide approach to cybersecurity in the scientific research and education infrastructure," and NSF's 2018 solicitation for CyberTraining projects highlights the need for "training and certification of CI Professionals in cybersecurity technology and management for advanced CI-enabled research."

CTSC resources and staff are available to assist Campus Cyberinfrastructure and CyberTraining projects with cybersecurity plans and training, via one-on-one engagements and other CTSC activities. For example, CTSC recently engaged with the University of New Hampshire Research Computing Center (funded in part by the NSF CC*DNI program).

Our cybersecurity program guide provides recommendations and templates for establishing and maintaining cybersecurity programs. Our online training materials and webinars cover many cybersecurity topics tailored to the NSF CI community. CTSC staff are available to participate in training events as our schedule and travel budget allows. We can also assist with disseminating announcements about training events and training materials to the community. Our annual cybersecurity summit provides a venue for training sessions for cybersecurity practitioners, technical leaders, and risk owners from within the NSF Large Facilities and CI community.

If you are preparing a Campus Cyberinfrastructure or CyberTraining proposal to address cybersecurity needs, please see our guidance on including CTSC in a proposal and don't hesitate to contact us to discuss how CTSC can help.

CPP-CTSC SFS Cyberinfrastructure Security Workshop

On the weekend of October 14th, the California State Polytechnic University Pomona Scholarship for Service program in collaboration with the Center for Trustworthy Scientific Cyberinfrastructure (CTSC) hosted a cyber workshop for Scholarship for Service (SFS) students. 45 Students from 13 different universities traveled to Pomona, CA, to participate despite looming midterms the following week. Students spent all day Saturday and half of Sunday participating in workshops covering topics such as public key infrastructure and deployment, log analysis + Splunk, network security in a Science DMZ, and federated identity and access management.

The Student Attendees

The students at this workshop are participants of the Cybercorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) program, designed by the National Science Foundation to strengthen the workforce of information assurance professionals protecting the government’s critical information infrastructure. The SFS program provides a scholarship to full-time students that typically includes full tuition, related fees, and a stipend. These students then repay the program through public service and employment in a government agency. Agencies and positions qualifiable for the program include both federal and state institutions.

The CPP and CTSC Instructors

The engagement process started in May of 2017, with CPP submitting an application to CTSC requesting assistance in creating a training workshop for the SFS students. Once the engagement started, CPP and CTSC equally shared the task of planning the event.   Cal Poly Professors Dr. Mohammad Husain, Dr. Ron Pike, and Dr. Tingting Chen, as well as CTSC security professionals Dr. Jim Basney, Jeannette Dopheide, John Zage, and Kay Avila participated in the coordination. Materials from previous CTSC lectures and training were used as a base for the lessons taught by CTSC, as well as for the creation of new material. Hands-on training was prepared in a single virtual machine from the NSF project SEED base image. The SEED image provides a host of instruction and training materials for Information security projects.

The day before the workshop, the CPP staff led the CTSC team through a tour of the facilities and introduced them to the various cyber student groups on the CPP campus. One of these groups, Students With an Interest in the Future of Technologies (SWIFT), were preparing for a national capture the flag competition, while another group, CPP PolySec Lab, was penetration testing integrated devices. A third group demonstrated their student-run data center, including a small server room with server racks and sensors. This data center provides services to students while providing excellent experience to the students managing the server.

On Saturday, the workshop began with Dr. Mohammad Husain, the director of cyber security programs and Cal Poly Pomona’s SFS Principal investigator, introducing the instructors for the weekend. Following introductions, the day started with CTSC instructors introducing a set of cyberinfrastructure projects currently being worked on, namely HTCondor, DKIST, and OSiRIS.

At the end of the day on Saturday, the students were introduced to a panel of professionals to showcase different career paths for the security profession. The panel consisted of Karl Mattson, the Chief Information Security Officer for City National Bank; Veronica Mitchel, a cyber risk officer for the city of Long Beach,  CA; Deronda Dubose, a special agent for the secret service; John W. McGuthry, the Chief Information Officer for Cal Poly Pomona; and Dr. Basney, a CTSC co-PI.  Dr. Daniel Manson, a professor and the campus Information Security Officer at Cal Poly, moderated the conversation. Students did a phenomenal job participating in the panel, giving elevator speeches and promoting their extracurricular activities while receiving feedback on their participation from the panel.

Survey results were collected after the workshop, and responses indicate the hands-on sessions were well received, especially the log analysis session. Ninety-five percent of students found the workshop either good or excellent, while sixty-three percent thought they were more likely to pursue a career in cyberinfrastructure security after the workshop. For more information about the workshop, slides, handouts, and videos will be uploaded here.