Jeremy Epstein, Program Manager at NSF, and Lorrie Cranor in their “password attire”
In honor of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE-USA) sponsored a Capitol Hill briefing titled Privacy and Security in a Connected Age on October 30. This briefing was hosted by the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, including the Caucus Co-Chairs Congressman Michael McCaul and Congressman James Langevin.
Dr. C Suzanne Iacono, acting Assistant Director for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate at NSF and moderator of the panel, opened the session by saying, “If we want a future with more individual choice and freedom, a future that we want to live in…we need to create large scale systems that are resilient and secure…and design in privacy and security from the start.”
She then introduced three experts to explain the nature of cybersecurity threats and discuss new, innovative ways to combat them:
Dr. Lorrie Cranor, Director of the Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory and Professor of Computer Science, Engineering, and Political Science at Carnegie Mellon University, spoke about human factors and public policy with respect to privacy. She has done extensive research on the communication of privacy and acknowledges that we have a long way to go. Current policies rely on notice of privacy policies and then choices by consumers, but that assumes that consumers are actually reading the policies (and updates), which in most cases, they are not.
Dr. Roxana Geambasu, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University discussed the data-driven world in which we live and the lack of transparency in the ecosystem. She shared work that is going on in her lab to combat the lack of transparency online.
Dr. Gary McGraw, Chief Technology Officer at Cigital, Inc., discussed the importance of basic research in technology transfer, with references to the work he has done in software security.
Video of the full briefing can be found here.
