KEYNOTES

Speaker: Dr. Engin Kirda

Abstract: In this talk, I will be taking a step back, and looking at about a decade's worth of web security research that I have been involved in. I will try to answer if we are seeing an improvement in web security, how effective some past approaches have been, and where there might be potential for some interesting future work.

Bio: Dr. Engin Kirda is chief architect at global breach protection provider Lastline - which he co-founded in 2011 - as well as a computer science professor at Northeastern University in Boston. He has co-authored more than 140 published research papers. Before Northeastern, he held faculty positions at Institut Eurecom in the French Riviera and the Technical University of Vienna where he co-founded the Secure Systems Lab that is now distributed across multiple institutions in Europe and the U.S. Engin's recent research has focused on malware analysis and detection, web application security and practical aspects of social networking security - including the de-anonymization of social network users. He has served on program committees of numerous well-known international conferences and workshops. In 2009, Engin was the program committee chair of RAID, in 2015, the program committee chair of NDSS, and in 2017, the program committee co-chair of USENIX Security. In the past, Engin has consulted the European Commission on emerging threats, and gave a Congressional Briefing in Washington D.C. on advanced malware attacks and cyber-security. He also spoke at SXSW Interactive 2015 about "Malware in the Wild."

Speaker: Dr. Kathleen M. Carkey

Abstract: Social cyber-security is an emerging transdiciplinary science aimed at keeping the internet an open environment for the free exchange of ideas, without subjecting individuals to undue influence or misinformation. The basic tenets of this area, the researchers, and the challenges are discussed. The nature od social cyber security as a computational social science is described. Key insights on bot activity and the opportunities for information manipulation are presented.

Experience: Dr. Kathleen M. Carkey is a Professor of Computer Science in the Institute for Software Research, IEEE Fellow, and Director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University. She joined Carnegie Mellon in 1984 as Assistant Professor Sociology and Information Systems. In 1990 she became Associate Professor of Sociology and Organizations, in 1998 Professor of Sociology, Organizations, and Information Technology, and in 2002, attained her current role as Professor of Computation, Organization, and Society. She is also the CEO of Carley Technologies Inc. aka Netanomics. Dr. Carley’s research combines cognitive science, sociology, and computer science to address complex social and organizational issues. Her most notable research contribution was the establishment of Dynamic Network Analysis (DNA) – and the associated theory and methodology for examining large high‐ dimensional time variant networks. Her research on DNA has resulted in tools for analyzing large‐scale dynamic networks and various multi‐agent simulation systems. She has led the development of tools for extracting sentiment, social and semantic networks from social media and other textual data (AutoMap & NetMapper), simulating epidemiological models (BioWar), and simulating changes in beliefs and practice given information campaigns (Construct). Her ORA system is one of the premier network analysis and visualization technologies supporting geo‐temporal analysis of social network and high‐dimensional/meta‐network data. It includes special features for handling small and big data, social media data, and network dynamics. It is used worldwide. Illustrative projects include assessment of fake news and social cyber‐security threats, IRS outreach, impact of NextGen on airline re‐rerouting, counter‐ terrorism modeling, counter‐narcotics modeling, health analytics, and social media based assessment of crises such as Benghazi, Darfur, and the Arab Spring.

Education: Dr. Carley received SB degrees in Economics and in Political Science from M.I.T., and a PhD degree in Sociology from Harvard University.

Publications: Among Dr. Carley’s many scientific publications, she co‐authored papers Benigni, “Online extremism and the communities that sustain it: Detecting the ISIS supporting community on Twitter” (2017), “Exploring Characteristics of Suspended Users and Network Stability on Twitter” (2016), “Transition Networks in a Cohort of Patients with Congestive Heart Failure” (2015), “Remote assessment of countries’ nuclear, biological, and cyber capabilities: joint motivation and latent capability approach” (2015), “Destabilizing Terrorist Networks” (2003), “The Impact of US Cyber Policies on Cyber‐Attacks Trend” (2016), “Rapid Modeling and Analyzing Networks Extracted from Pre‐Structured News Articles” (2012).

Honors: Dr. Carley is an IEEE Fellow. IN 2018 she received the USGA Academic Award at GEOINT 2018 for her work on geo‐spatially enabled dynamic network analytics. She is the recipient of the Allen Newell award for research excellence. She has served as President of the North American Association for Computational and Organizational Simulation (2003‐2004) and of the Mathematical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (1999‐2000). She received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Sociology and Computers Section of the ASA (2001). In 2011 she received the Simmel Award for advances in the area of social networks from INSNA and became a senior member of the IEEE. She has served as a Task Force Member of the Defense Science Board and of Geographic Information Science Panel of the Strategic Command. She has served on multiple National Research Council panels including ones on the military, big data, geo‐spatial analytics, and the decadel survey for the social sciences and was a member of the DHS‐HSSTAC.

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