Ravi Sandhu Speaking on the Future of Cyber Security in Shreveport on Tuesday

Ravi Sandhu, executive director of the Institute for Cyber Security, will be representing ICS at the Ark-La-Tex Chapter of AFCEA, discussing the future of cyber security. Consider attending the talk if you have an interest in cyber security and will be in the Shreveport area.

From the Shreveport Times:

"Ravi Sandhu, founder and executive director of the Institute for Cyber Security at the University of Texas at San Antonio, will be guest speaker at Tuesday's monthly luncheon of the Ark-La-Tex Chapter of AFCEA, the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association. Sandhu's topic will be 'Speculations on the future of cyber security in 2025.'"

Date: Tuesday, November 17th, 2009, 11:30AM
Location: DiamondJack's Casino, 711 Diamond Jack's Blvd,Bossier City, LA 71111
Phone: (318) 678-7777‎

For more details, go to the chapter site.

Erhan J. Kartaltepe, PMP
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

Speaking at InnoTech 2009 Oklahoma City on November 4

Jeff Reich, our director of research operations, will be representing the Institute for Cyber Security at the InnoTech 2009 conference, speaking on securing the present and future of cloud computing on Wednesday, November 4. Folks in the Oklahoma City area who are interested in cloud computing or security (or both!) should plan to attend the talk on Wednesday afternoon.

From the InnoTech site: 

"In April of 2009, the Cloud Security Alliance published version 1 of Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing. Version 2 of this guidance is scheduled for release in October of 2009.

In this session, Jeff Reich will provide an overview of the updated guidance and identify some of the key security risks being introduced to the enterprise by the rapid adoption of cloud computing, a look ahead to how cloud computing will transform business and the nature of IT."

Date: Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
Location: Oklahoma City Cox Business Services Convention Center, 51 Myriad Gardens, Oklahoma City, OK 73102-9219
Phone: (405) 602-8500

For more details, go to the conference site.

Erhan J. Kartaltepe, PMP
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

Speaking at InnoTech 2009 on October 29

Jeff Reich, our director of research operations, will be representing the Institute for Cyber Security at the InnoTech 2009 conference, speaking on securing the present and future of cloud computing on Thursday, October 29. Folks in the Austin area who are interested in cloud computing or security (or both!) should plan to attend the talk on Thursday afternoon.

From the InnoTech site: 

"In April of 2009, the Cloud Security Alliance published version 1 of Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing. Version 2 of this guidance is scheduled for release in October of 2009.

In this session, Jeff Reich and Josh Zachry will provide an overview of the updated guidance and identify some of the key security risks being introduced to the enterprise by the rapid adoption of cloud computing, a look ahead to how cloud computing will transform business and the nature of IT."

Date: Thursday, October 29th, 2009
Location: Austin Convention Center, 500 East Cesar Chavez Street Austin, TX 78701

For more details, go to the chapter site.

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

UTSA Cyber Security Lecture Series This Month

UTSA invites the public to attend free cyber security lectures in observance of Cyber Security Awareness Month. This is its third straight year of observance, and they have a dedicated site for the event that is definitely worth checking out.

As mentioned previously, Ravi Sandhu, executive director for the Institute for Cyber Security, will be speaking at one of these lectures on Friday, October 30. All of these events are free and open to the public, and anyone interested interested in any facet of cyber security should make it one (or all) of them.

Below is the press release for the series:

UTSA Invites Public to Attend Free Cyber Security Lectures

October is Cyber Security Awareness Month

San Antonio … For the third straight year, The University of Texas at San Antonio’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) will observe Cyber Security Awareness Month (CSAM), created by the U.S. Dept of Homeland Security and the National Cyber Security Alliance to raise awareness of information security issues.

During CSAM, UTSA’s Information Security Office will sponsor a variety of lectures designed to underscore the importance of being safe online.  The lectures, which are free and open to the public, will be given by speakers from UTSA, government agencies and the private sector.

UTSA’s Cyber Security Awareness Month 2009 Lecture Series

Kickoff meeting, UTSA Information Security Office
October 19, 3:00 p.m., Retama Auditorium (University Center, 2.02.02, Main Campus)

“Child Safe – Protecting Kids Online” – Lee Carsten, ISSA
October 21, 3:00 p.m., Retama Auditorium (University Center, 2.02.02, Main Campus)

“The Wall of Sheep” – Joseph Mlodzianowski
October 23, 3:00 p.m., Retama Auditorium (University Center, 2.02.02, Main Campus)

“Identity Theft and Protection” – Special Agent Chris Lamb, FBI
October 26, 3:00 p.m., Retama Auditorium (University Center, 2.02.02, Main Campus)

“Automated Vulnerability Attacks” – Billy Austin, SAINT Corp.
October 28, 2:30 p.m., Retama Auditorium (University Center, 2.02.02, Main Campus)

“Child Safe – Protecting Kids Online” – Lee Carsten, ISSA
October 29, 3:00 p.m., FS 1.402 (Downtown Campus)

“Cyber Security- What You Need to Know” – Ravi Sandhu, Ph.D., UTSA Institute for Cyber Security
October 30, 3:00 p.m., Retama Auditorium (University Center, 2.02.02, Main Campus)

In addition to UTSA’s 2009 cyber security lecture series, UTSA students may participate in a Web-based game that will reward them for attending sessions and learning more about information security.  Winners in the “Treasure Island” game may win prizes: an iPod Touch, iPod Shuffle or a Google backpack. The game begins October 16.

“Through CSAM, we hope to increase awareness of information security so that each individual at UTSA can protect themselves and the UTSA community,” said Carolyn Ellis, assistant director, OIT Customer Relations and Communications.

For more information about the lectures or the “Treasure Island” game, please visit the official UTSA cyber security Web site: http://www.utsa.edu/cybersecurity.

#  #  #

About the University of Texas at San Antonio

The University of Texas at San Antonio is one of the fastest growing higher education institutions in Texas and the second largest of nine academic universities and six health institutions in the UT System.  As a multicultural research and teaching institution of access and excellence, UTSA aims to be a premier public research university, providing access to educational excellence and preparing citizen leaders for the global environment.

UTSA serves more than 29,100 students in 64 bachelor’s, 47 master’s and 21 doctoral degree programs in the colleges of Architecture, Business, Education and Human Development, Engineering, Honors, Liberal and Fine Arts, Public Policy, Sciences and Graduate School.  Founded in 1969, UTSA is an intellectual and creative resource center and a socioeconomic development catalyst for Texas and beyond.

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

Speaking at UTSA's Cyber Security Awareness Month Event on October 30

Ravi Sandhu, executive director for the Institute for Cyber Security, will be speaking at UTSA as part of its cyber security awareness month event on Friday, October 30. This event is open to the public and all folks in the San Antonio area who are interested in cyber security should make it to the talk.

Below is the release for the talk.

Title: The Future of Cyber Security
Speaker: Ravi Sandhu
Location: University Center Retama Room (UC 2.02.02) UTSA Main Campus
Date/Time: Friday, October 30, 3:00PM to 4:00PM

Bio: Ravi Sandhu is the Founding Executive Director of the Institute for Cyber Security at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he holds the Lutcher Brown Chair in Cyber Security. Prior to joining UTSA in 2007 he served on the faculty at George Mason University (1989-2007) and Ohio State University (1982-1989). He holds BTech and MTech degress from IIT Bombay and Delhi and MS and PhD degrees from Rutgers University. He is a Fellow of ACM, IEEE and AAAS, and has received awards from ACM, IEEE, NSA and NIST. His 180+ technical papers have accumulated 10,000+ Google Scholar citations. His research has been funded by NSF, NSA, NIST, DARPA, AFOSR, ONR, AFRL and others. His seminal papers on role-based access control (RBAC) led to RBAC becoming the dominant form of access control in commercial systems. His current projects include his seminal Usage Control model, new models for group-centric information sharing, security in social networking, botnet analysis and defense, high assurance security and the PEI method for secure systems design. He served as founding Editor-in-Chief of ACM TISSEC and Chairman of ACM SIGSAC, and is incoming Editor-in-Chief of IEEE TDSC. He has consulted for numerous industry and government organizations, and has lectured all over the world. He is an inventor on 16 security technology patents. His web site is at www.profsandhu.com.

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

Speaking at ISSA South Texas Chapter on October 8

Jeff Reich, our director of research operations, will be representing the Institute for Cyber Security at the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) South Texas chapter , speaking on cloud computing and security on Thursday, October 8. Folks in the Houston area who are interested in cloud computing or security (or both!) should plan to attend the talk.

From the ISSA site: 

"In April of 2009, the Cloud Security Alliance published version 1 of Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing.  Version 2 of this guidance is scheduled for release in October of 2009.  In this session, Jeff Reich will provide an overview of the updated guidance and identify some of the key security risks being introduced to the enterprise by the rapid adoption of cloud computing with a look ahead to how cloud computing will transform business and the nature of IT."

Date: Thursday, October 8th, 2009
Location: Houston Engineering & Scientific Society (HESS), 5430 Westheimer at Yorktown, Houston, TX 77001

For more details, go to the chapter site.

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

Cyber Security Awareness Month

October marks Cyber Security Awareness Month. Observed annually, the event was created by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the National Cyber Security Alliance to increase awareness of information security and issues.

Naturally, one should always be concerned about security, but this gives one a chance to evaluate and improve one's cyber security practices.

Look for events throughout the month from the Institute for Cyber Security to commemorate Cyber Security Awareness Month to be posted on this site soon!

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

Speaking at the Malware 2009 Conference Next Month

Folks in Montreal who are interested in botnet security should plan to attend the Malware 2009 in October. There are a number of great speakers and experts in the field attending, which should be quite an experience.

Members from the Institute for Cyber Security will be presenting on "Analyzing DNS Activities of Bot Processes" during the conference from October 13 through October 14. The talk will cover botnets and bot processes at a high level, then discuss how to apply DNS monitoring to track their activities on a zombie machine, as well as some encouraging results.

Dates: Tuesday, October 13th through Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
Location: Delta Centre-Ville, Montreal, Quebec (888) 890-3222

For more details, go to the conference site.

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

Ravi Sandhu Presenting on Access Control in Lyon, France

Dr. Ravi Sandhu, Executive Director of the Institute for Cyber Security, will be in Lyon, France on August 28, to give a talk for the 6th VLDB Workshop on Secure Data Management. His talk will be on an Access Control Language for a General Provenance Model, alongside fellow ICS colleague Shouhuai Xu. More on the workshop can be found here.

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

ICS Startup SafeMashups Inc. Covered in the News at RSA

SafeMashups, Inc., the latest startup from the Institute for Cyber Security, spoke at the RSA conference Innovator's Sandbox (where the team was selected as a finalist in the "Most Innovative Company at RSA Conference 2009" contest) and at the RSA WhisperSuite. Some press covered the event, and staff from ICS was interviewed on the MashSSL innovation.

Help Net Security, a, covered SafeMashups at the event in an online article and podcast, where I was interviewed. In the article, Berislav Kucan discusses how SafeMashups is a San Antonio-based application authentication pioneer, and how the MashSSL protocol which provides a standardized way for web applications to securely identify each other when mashing through a potentially untrusted browser.

O'Reilly Media (well known for their famous software animal books), covered the event as well, and Ben Lorica interviewed me on the MashSSL protocol at a high level, and how it brings a trust infrastructure to mashups.

Tech Pulse 360 also covered the Innovator's Sandbox in an online article describing how SafeMashups hopes to make it easier for businesses to take advantage of Internet mashups that link their sites to others, quoting founder Ravi Ganesan, stating how companies "have no standard, secure way of knowing who is on the other end".

LeMagIT covered SafeMashups across the pond in France in a fastastic writeup (see it here in Google-translated English) that described SafeMashups as a company specializing in the security of interlinking web applications for the collection of information, particularly in the context of the management of access rights. They also discuss the free MashSSL web toolkit and the free SafeMashups Community Service.

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu