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The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

Startup Lessons Learned

Richard Carback (Ph.D. UMBC CS 2010)
xx network

12:00–1:00pm ET, Friday,12 February 12 2021
WebEx: https://umbc.webex.com/meet/sherman

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This talk will explore the technology and lessons learned by UMBC alumnus Richard Carback from his experience co-founding and closing the security startup Lexumo, which provided the only automated service that continuously monitors IoT software platforms for the latest public vulnerabilities. In addition to covering some of the hard problems and Lexumo’s technical approach for monitoring all the world’s open-source software to assist companies in managing their vulnerabilities, Dr. Carback will discuss the mistakes and complexities of getting funded, delivering a product, and finding customers.

Dr. Richard Carback is a UMBC Alumnus (CS Ph.D., 2010) who is an entrepreneur who currently runs a private consultancy for computer security, computer forensics, cryptography, and smart contracts. He is a privacy-preserving systems expert with a background in elections and anonymity networks. While the group leader for the embedded systems security group at Charles Stark Draper Laboratories, he spun out an IoT vulnerability startup called Lexumo that provided the only automated service that continuously monitored IoT software platforms for the latest public vulnerabilities. At UMBC, he worked with Alan Sherman on secure elections and was the primary researcher behind Takoma Park’s deployment of the Scantegrity voting system, the first usage of voter-verifiable end-to-end election technology in a municipal election. email: *protected email*

Host: Alan T. Sherman, *protected email*. Support for this event was provided in part by the NSF under SFS grant DGE-1753681. The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab meets biweekly Fridays 12-1 pm. All meetings are open to the public. Upcoming CDL Meetings:

• Feb 26, Vahid Heydari (Rowan University)
• Mar 12, Chao Liu (UMBC), Efficient asynchronous BFT with adaptive security
• Mar 26, Jeremy Clark (Concordia)
• April 9, (UMBC), MeetingMayhem: A network adversarial thinking game
• April 23, Peter Peterson (University of Minnesota Duluth), Adversarial thinking
• May 7, Farid Javani (UMBC), Anonymization by oblivious transfer

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Two UMBC alumnae featured in The CyberWire podcast

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The CyberWire produced a special podcast, In the clear: what it’s like working as a woman in the cleared community, that features three women working on cybersecurity atNorthrop Grumman. Two are UMBC alumnae, software engineering manager Lauren and cyber software engineer Priyanka.

Lauren received a BS in Computer Science in 2015 and an M.S. in Computer Science in 2017. As an undergraduate student, she worked part-time as an IT Security Analyst tracking, locating, and performing forensics on infected computers located on campus. She joined Northrop Grumman in 2015 and continued her studies as a part-time graduate student, doing research on investigating different ways of characterizing cybersecurity exploit kits and the malware they produce.

Priyanka received a BS in Computer Science in 2018 and an MS in Computer Science in 2019. Her MS research was on multilingual text alignment for cybersecurity. She has been a lecture in the UMBC Computer Science program and the UMD Advanced Cybersecurity Experience for Students (ACES) program. She is currently working on a Computer Science Ph.D. at UMBC focused on how AI can help protect cybersecurity systems from data poisoning attacks.

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Listen to the 47 minute podcast here.

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UMBC Data Science Meetup Talk

Exploding Blockchain Myths

Maria Vachino and Dr. James P. Howard

5:30-7:00pm Tuesday, 13 October 2020

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In this talk, Maria Vachino from Easy Dynamics and Dr. James P. Howard from APL will provide an overview of what blockchain is and isn’t, focusing on non-cryptocurrency use cases, will explain the results of their research for the DHS S&T Cybersecurity Directorate, and will provide insight into the value (or lack therefore) of the technology.

References:
• https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8965252/
• http://jitm.ubalt.edu/XXX-3/article3.pdf

Maria Vachino is the Director of Digital Identity at Easy Dynamics where she is focused on Identity Credential & Access Management (ICAM) technologies, policies, & standards, Cybersecurity, and IT modernization for the US Federal Government. She started investigating applications for blockchain technology in 2015 as the Technical and Government Engagement Lead for the DHS S&T Cyber Security Directorate’s Identity Management Research & Development Program while a member of the Senior Professional Staff at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. Maria has a BS in Computer Science from UMBC and an MS in Cybersecurity.

Dr. James P. Howard, II (UMBC Ph.D. ’14) is a scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Previously, he was a consultant to numerous government agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Executive Office of the President, and the United States Department of Homeland Security, and worked for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System as an internal consultant on scientific computing. He is a passionate educator, teaching mathematics and statistics at the University of Maryland Global Campus since 2010 and has taught public management at Central Michigan University, Penn State, and the University of Baltimore. His most recent work has modeled the spread of infectious respiratory diseases and Ebolavirus, predicted global disruptive events, researched using blockchain for government services, and created devices for rescuing victims of building collapse. He is the author of two books.

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UMBC Cyber Defense Lab

SPARCLE: Practical Homomorphic Encryption

Russ Fink

Senior Scientist
Johns Hopkins University / Applied Physics Laboratory

12:00–1:00pm Friday, April 27, 2018, ITE 237, UMBC

In the newly coined Privacy Age, researchers are building systems with homomorphic algorithms that enable “never decrypt” operations on sensitive data in applications such as computational private information retrieval (cPIR). The trouble is, the leading algorithms incur significant computational and space challenges, relegating them mainly to large cloud computing platforms. We have invented a special-purpose, ring-homomorphic (aka, “fully homomorphic”) algorithm that, owing to some specializing assumptions, trades general-purpose cryptographic utility for linear performance in speed and space.

We will present the cryptosystem and discuss several current challenges. We will also throw in a fun, simple, tactile concept demonstration of PIR for those just generally curious about what all this is, hopefully demystifying how you can enable a server to search for something without knowing what it’s looking for, and without knowing what (if any) results it found.

Russ Fink (UMBC ’10) is a senior scientist at the Johns Hopkins University / Applied Physics Laboratory. His current research interests include private information retrieval, applied cryptography, and cyber security.

Host: Alan T. Sherman, *protected email*

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UMBC faculty, alumni and corporate partners discuss cybersecurity and industry challenges

Cybersecurity is regularly a headliner in the news, especially when personal information stored online has been compromised, whether through a breach, hack, or threat. On Thursday, December 7, UMBC hosted experts from industry and academia at the National Press Club to discuss the cyber challenges professionals face, and how those groups can work together to prepare future generations of cybersecurity professionals.

Scott Shane, a reporter with The New York Times, led the discussion with five panelists representing industry, small business, and higher education. “I think it’s fair to say the internet was built without adequate attention to security,” stated Shane, who writes about cyber and information attacks regularly. “It’s almost like somebody who starts a bank with branches all over the world, and after it’s up and running and has millions of account holders, suddenly starts to think about safes, locks on the doors and bulletproof glass. I think that’s sort of the stage that we’re at right now.”

UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski and Anupam Joshi, professor and chair of computer science and electrical engineering, and director of the Center for Cybersecurity at UMBC, were joined by alumni and partners who have been working on the challenge of educating the workforce together. Hrabowski explained that there are currently about 350,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs, and that number is expected to continue to grow. By 2021, it is anticipated that there will be approximately three million job openings in cyber-related fields.

Over the course of his professional career, Nigel Faulkner, chief technology officer at T. Rowe Price, has experienced the emergence of technology and many changes. “As the CTO of a medium-large company, cyber is a defensive investment for us. The best thing that can happen is nothing happens,” Faulkner said, adding that he is always thinking about whether the company is investing enough, doing the right thing, and making the right connections in the industry to keep clients’ information safe.

As president and founder of TCecure, LLC, and cybersecurity academic innovation officer for University System of Maryland (USM), Tina Williams ’02, computer science, shared the importance of building security into technology from the beginning, rather than adding these features on at the “tail end of a development cycle.” Not only does her company handle security, they also monitor threats and risks that can compromise the technology’s health. In her role at USM, Williams represents the system as a whole to integrate academia and academic research, relationships, and resources into what’s taking place nationally, at the Federally Funded Research and Development Centers.

As head of UMBC’s Center for Cybersecurity, Joshi explained that UMBC is combating these national challenges by partnering with industry and government leaders to conduct research that addresses specific real-world needs that benefit both. Collaborative relationships, such as UMBC’s work with Northrop Grumman and T. Rowe Price, is one way that UMBC is working to cultivate the next generation of cybersecurity talent.

As an alumna of UMBC and a current employee at Northrop Grumman, Lauren Mazzoli ’15, computer science and mathematics, M.S. ’17, computer science, a systems engineer in the Future Technical Leaders Program at Northrop Grumman, discussed her experience in the Cyber Scholars Program. The Cyber Scholars Program works to increase the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in the field. Mazzoli explained that her experience at UMBC, in the Cyber Scholars Program, and working alongside mentors on and off-campus led her to be involved with continuing to encourage women to pursue careers in cybersecurity. “For me it’s been a product of the relationship between academia and industry, that have allowed me to find my own career path, and at the same time help others find theirs,” she explained, noting her passion for helping students consider careers in cybersecurity and related fields.

“We know there’s a huge workforce that we need and we can’t fill that pipeline. So yes, we need more women, yes, we need students of all backgrounds, but we need diversity of thought, experience, education, and problem-solving skills,” said Mazzoli, adding that it is important for students to know from a young age that cybersecurity is a field they can pursue.

Adapted from a UMBC News article article written by Megan Hanks Photo by Abnet Shiferaw ’11, visual arts.

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