The Human Side of
Cybersecurity Seminar Series

CCI is committed to informing and engaging the cybersecurity community all on fronts. This is especially true with our well-attended seminars.

The spring seminar series is focused on the human side of cybersecurity and is organized by CCI Fellow Milos Manic, a computer science professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. The Feb. 18 seminar starts at 11 a.m. and will feature guest speaker Lorrie Carron, the director and Bosch Distinguished Professor of the CyLab Security and Privacy Institute and FORE Systems Professor of Computer Science and of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

I’m looking forward to this conversation. We’re in a technical field, so it’s no surprise that cybersecurity experts in the past focused on the technical aspects of security, frequently glossing over how humans would actually use what they created. Lorrie will discuss some of the lessons learned during the past 20 years and the future of security and privacy research.

Please mark your calendars for the final two seminars in the series. The one-hour session starts at 11 a.m. 

• March 18, 2021: John Doyle, a California Institute of Technology system scientist who is known for his robust-yet-fragile approach on complexity and psychological responses to risk.

• April 15, 2021: Ronald L. Boring, a distinguished human factors scientist as well as the department manager and human factors lead at Idaho National Laboratory.

You can watch CCI seminars on our YouTube channel, including last week’s edition with David Woods of The Ohio State University. He discusses how such adaptive systems as biology and social can be applied to cybersecurity to increase resiliency. 

SolarWinds: Hacked — A CCI Seminar

Upcoming Call for Proposals

Research powers our mission and you can expect two new calls for proposals by March. One call to be issued in early February will build upon the successful experiential learning grants from last year. These programs give students hands-on industry experience to enhance their skills and prepare them for the cybersecurity workforce. Learn more about the awarded 2020 experiential learning grants.  

Cybersecurity influences our lives in a myriad of unexpected ways; expanding on this theme is a priority at CCI. This year, Virginia’s talented researchers in social sciences, humanities and the law will collaborate with CCI cybersecurity experts to explore new approaches to thwart the spread of misinformation and disinformation. I’m excited to discover what the teams propose to study. Keep an eye on our website, and future newsletters, for the release of this CFP. If it’s anything like the recently awarded Building Bridges Arts and Design Collaboration grants, we’re sure to be surprised and better informed about how cybersecurity issues influence our society.

You’ll hear more from the Building Bridges grant awardees this year. They recently met to discuss their projects and we hope to display their works in the fall at an in-person event.

Building Cybersecurity into Manufacturing

Investment is increasing in cybersecurity and a good example is the Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CyManII), a $111 million public-private partnership led by the University of Texas at San Antonio. CCI Node leaders George Mason University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Virginia Tech are all part of CyManII. The consortium is working with the U.S. Department of Energy to focus on a cybersecure energy-ROI that drives American manufacturers and supply chains to further adopt secure, energy-efficient approaches, ultimately securing and sustaining the nation’s leadership in global manufacturing competitiveness.

Make Way for AI Equipment

The CCI team is busy increasing the capabilities of our testbeds, which are unique in Virginia and the country. So much new equipment is arriving in the Arlington office that we could build our own fort with all the boxes. You’ll be seeing the results of the activity soon from the AI Assurance Testbed, led by Abdul Rahman. You also can spot 5G Testbed Director Aloizio Pereira da Silva in the field testing out 5G capabilities, especially with drones.