The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) recently created a working group on physical resilience. The working group is made up of cyber-security experts from across academia, government and industry with the intent to identify research areas and possible solutions, as well as, advance current approaches to bolstering cyber-physical resilience.  Among the new working group members is former Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council Member Kevin Fu. Kevin Fu is a Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering and the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. Fu served on the CCC Council from 2015-2019. During his time at the CCC, Kevin was […]

CCC submitted a response to a Request for Information (RFI) released by Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD), National Coordination Office (NCO), and National Science Foundation (NSF) on the 2023 Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Strategic Plan. CCC previously released a blog about the importance of the RFI, and encouraged the computing community to respond. CCC’s response was written by: Nadya Bliss (Arizona State University)  Elizabeth Bradley (University of Colorado-Boulder)  Randal Burns (Johns Hopkins University)  Thomas M. Conte (Georgia Institute of Technology)  David Danks (University of California San Diego)  Nathan Evans (Arizona State University)  Kevin Fu (Northeastern University)  Haley Griffin (Computing Community Consortium)  William D. Gropp (University of […]

On behalf of Federal agencies and the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Cyber Security and Information Assurance Interagency Working Group, the National Coordination Office (NCO) for NITRD just published a request for information on the 2023 Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Strategic Plan. Pursuant to the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014, Federal agencies must update the Federal cybersecurity research and development (R&D) strategic plan every four years. The NITRD NCO seeks public input for the 2023 update of the Federal cybersecurity R&D strategic plan. The updated plan will be used to guide and coordinate federally funded research in cybersecurity, including cybersecurity education and workforce development, and the […]

Moshe Y. Vardi, Computer Science Professor at Rice University and Senior Editor of Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), wrote an article in the November 2022 issue of the Communications of the ACM magazine, Accountability and Liability in Computing. The article articulates his concerns for the slow progress and lack of conclusive knowledge on how to build secure information systems. Vardi speculates the issue is not due to a lack of technical advancements but a lack of incentives encouraging hardware security developments and solutions. It is becoming vital to address this “market failure” as we become more reliant on technical systems and become increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks.  Vardi […]

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) released a new program Guaranteeing AI Robustness against Deception (GARD) to aid Artificial Intelligence (AI) developers in testing their models’ defenses against attacks. A team of large technology players from academia and industry, including IBM, MITRE, University of Chicago and Google Research collaborated to make a set of open source testing tools. The tools, ranging from a virtual evaluation testbed, a benchmark dataset, and “test dummies” help identify vulnerabilities in AI systems and make systems more robust against an increasingly complex range of attacks. The growing field of Machine Learning (ML) enables a large range of opportunities for societal and technological growth, but […]

Interested in embedded security? Apply to join the second annual Embedded Security Workshop. The workshop will be hosted by Kevin Fu, former CCC Council Member and principal investigator of the SPQR Lab at the University of Michigan. From their website: “The workshop consists of a diverse set of talks by leading faculty and industrial researchers across the world ranging from medical device security to physics of analog sensor cybersecurity. Students will give lightning pitches of their research and participate in small breakout groups for discussion. The speakers range from industrial researchers to practicing neurosurgeons. The event focuses on improving diversity and inclusion for leading research in embedded security. There is […]