Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Cyber Security, in collaboration with the Information Technology Support Center, will host the 12th annual Cyber Security Day on October 29.
This annual event features nationally recognized security experts as well as speakers from regional law enforcement, government, security industry, and academia.
It is free and open to the community.
“We have been successfully organizing the Cybersecurity Day at IUP for 12 years,” Waleed Farag, director of the IUP Institute for Cybersecurity and professor of computer science, said.
“All of our past events were very well attended, with more than 200 attendees in 2018. This unique event invites to IUP nationally recognized security experts from academia, government, and the private sector to share their expertise with our participants. The event serves the need of our students and local community members, offering an opportunity to know more about cybersecurity, to learn about recent developments in the field, and to better understand how to protect their online information.”
The program will be held in IUP’s Hadley Union Building Ohio Room from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Persons are welcome to attend all or any of the sessions.
The event begins with welcome and opening remarks from Farag, IUP Provost Timothy Moerland, and Francisco Alarcón, chair of the Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences. Deanne Snavely, dean of the John J. and Char Kopchick College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, will present remarks following the lunch break.
Farag will present closing remarks at 3:50 p.m.
Schedule of Presentations
9:30 a.m. — “Cyber Science in an Exponentially Changing World”
Presented by Bryant Wysocki, senior level executive, technical advisor for C4I and Cyber Systems for the Air Force and associate director, Information Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Rome, New York. Wysocki provides technical oversight of these areas for the Air Force and advice on C4l and cyber systems to the highest level of Air Force and government officials.
The mission of the Information Directorate is to lead the discovery, development, and integration of affordable warfighting information technologies for air, space, and cyberspace multi-domain forces. The directorate consists of more than 1,200 onsite military, civilian scientists, engineers, and support personnel with an annual budget greater than $1.8 billion.
Wysocki evaluates technical approaches and develops transition strategies for directorate technologies and serves as the senior scientist liaison to external national and international partners across government, academia, and industry. He started his active duty career with the Air Force as a nuclear weapons technician in 1991 and served in numerous technical and operational positions throughout his service as a development engineer and, later, as a civilian scientist.
10:35–11:25 a.m. — “Is IoT Safe for Me?”
Presented by Joel Michael Schwarz, senior principal for Global Cyber Risk LLC, a technology and advisory services firm that provides first-tier cybersecurity services to both large corporations and small and mid-sized businesses. GCR has earned industry respect for its expertise in internationally accepted best practices and standards for cybersecurity programs.
Concurrent with his work at GCR, Schwarz is an adjunct professor at Albany Law School, where he developed and now teaches graduate-level courses on cybercrime, cybersecurity, and privacy. Schwarz previously served as the National Counterterrorism Center’s first civil liberties and privacy officer. Before this position, Schwarz was an attorney with the United States Department of Justice’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. He has also worked as counsel on E-Commerce for MetLife and served as the New York State Attorney General’s special counsel for Internet Matters, and assistant attorney general with the Attorney General’s Internet Bureau.
1:00–1:50 p.m. — “Cyber Career Opportunities”
Presented by Brian Gouker, division chief in the National Security Agencys College of Cyber. He is responsible for several NSA and national programs and directs the Centers of Academic Excellence in cyber defense and cyber operations programs, the GenCyber K-12 cyber summer camp initiative, a highly selective NSA technical summer internship program, the DoD Cybersecurity Scholarship Program, and manages advanced cyber education programs for NSA civilians and US Cyber Command military forces. He is also the government’s senior representative to the NATO Multinational Cyber Defense Education and Training Project, which is building the strategy for International Military Cyber workforce development.
Gouker is the past visiting professor and the first-ever chair for Cyber Studies at the US Army War College. He has completed external assignments at the FBI, the Defense Information Systems Agency, and with private industry.
2:00–2:50 p.m. — “CyberScience and Geoinformatics for Target Detection”
Presented by Guido Cervone, associate director of the Institute for CyberScience and Professor of Geoinformatics, Meteorology, and Atmospheric Science at Penn State University. He also holds the appointments of affiliate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Cervone’s expertise is in geoinformatics, machine learning, and remote sensing, and his research focuses on the development and application of computational algorithms for the analysis of remote sensing, numerical modeling, and social media spatio-temporal “Big Data.”
3:00—3:50 p.m. — “Cybersecurity in High Education: Securing Data in an Unsecured Environment”
Presented by Kyle Crain, information security architect and team lead for the Consulting and Architecture group within the Office of Information Security at Penn State University. Crain has worked at Penn State for 11 years and has been involved with the Office of Information Security for eight years. He has worked on a variety of key initiatives and services as a network security analyst and cybersecurity engineer before being named the information security architect.
IUP offers a bachelor’s degree in computer science/Cyber Security Track and a minor in Cyber Security. The university and the Institute for Cyber Security has a history of excellence and leadership in cybersecurity education and information assurance.
IUP, along with a selected group of national universities, has been awarded funding for the 2019–20 academic year from the Department of Defense in support of the Cyber Scholarship Program. In addition to the scholarship recruitment award, IUP received a Capacity Building award for a project titled “An Innovative Pedagogical Approach Based on Agile Methodology for Faculty Development in Cybersecurity.”
The goal of the Capacity Building Project is to find additional ways to recruit more students to enter the cybersecurity workforce. This goal will be achieved through a blend of faculty development, hands-on workshops, and the continued cultivation of relationships with local community colleges, which includes offering a number of workshops at surrounding community colleges.
IUP was first selected as a National Center for Academic Excellence in Information Assurance by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, a recognition that the university continues to hold. IUP is one of only 12 institutions in Pennsylvania currently holding this recognition.
IUP’s program is unique because of its interdisciplinary character, blending the disciplines of criminology and computer science. In addition to the development of computer programs and systems for cybersecurity, IUP’s program focuses on cybercrime detection, loss prevention, and how to collect the evidence to prosecute cybersecurity offenders.