Science of Security and Hard Problems Discussed at 1st Lablet Quarterly Meeting Held at NSA
Lablet Researchers meet at NSA, discuss Science of Security Hard Problems
The fall 2016 quarterly Science of Security (SoS) Lablet meeting was hosted, for the first time, by NSA in the Emerson V Auditorium on November 2-3, 2016. The agenda included panels on progress in the Science of Security and NSA research hard problems. The quarterly meeting also included the presentation ceremony for the 4th Best Scientific Cybersecurity Research Paper and presentations from the Lablets on their current research.
Dr. Deborah Frincke, Director of NSA’s Research Directorate, hosted the event. This was the first quarterly meeting held at NSA, offering more agency participation and giving the researchers a better opportunity to see the sponsoring agency’s interests in the Science of Security. Dr. Frincke noted the importance of rigorous science to the agency’s mission and that this importance is demonstrated by the appointment of a Science Advisor working with the Director. “Science”, she said, “is a way to get the government, academia, and industry working together to make better, smarter decisions about security investment.”
Dr. Adam Tagert, Technical Director for Science of Security, provided a program overview and described progress to date. Goals for the Science of Security project are to develop rigorous, generalizable, predictable, foundational, and empirical approaches that explain the real world and cyberspace. Researchers have produced more than 370 scientific papers dealing with the five hard problems of scalability and composability, predictive metrics, resilient architectures, policy-based governance, and human factors. The four Lablets now have 25 sub-lablets and 106 research collaborators.
The panel on progress in the Science of Security was moderated by Brad Martin and consisted of the four Lablet Principle Investigators, Laurie Williams, NCSU; David Nicol, UIUC, Michel Cukier, UMD; and Bill Scherlis, CMU. Following brief descriptions of each Lablet’s research focus and performance, the discussion became enthusiastically interactive. Panelists and the audience offered a range of comments about how to produce research that disrupts the adversary’s ability to get in, stay in, and act within our systems and networks. Topics of discussion ranged from modelling schemes, privacy, and “science envy” to supply chain problems. (A more detailed description of this discussion is forthcoming.)
The winner of the fourth Annual NSA Competition for Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper was “Nomad: Mitigating Arbitrary Cloud Side Channels via Provider-Assisted Migration” by Soo-Jin Moon, Vyas Sekar and Michael Reiter from Carnegie Mellon University and University of North Carolina. Two papers are recognized as honorable mentions: “Quantum-Secure Covert Communication on Bosonic Channels” written by a team of researchers at University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Raytheon-BBN: Boulat A. Bash, Andrei H. Gheorghe, Monika Patel, Jonathan L. Habif, Dennis Goeckel, Don Towsley, and Saikat Guha. The other honorable mention paper is “Increasing Cybersecurity Investments in Private Sector Firms” by Lawrence Gordon, Martin Loeb, William Lucyshyn and Lei Zhou, a research group at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Speakers for the Cross Domain Services Management Office, Office of Computing and Analytic Research, the Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences, and the Trusted Research Division described the hard problems they face in mission fulfillment. A lively interactive discussion followed the presentations. (More details about this panel will be an addressed in a companion article.)
The four PIs outlined in more detail the research within their group and showed its relationship to the five hard problems. The slides from these presentations will be posted at: http://cps-vo.org/SoSLabletQtrlyMeeting_4Q16
More than twenty excellent Lablet poster presentations provided an opportunity to see a range of Science of Security research and discuss issues, methods, and findings. The posters will also be available on the SoS VO web page.
The next lablet quarterly meeting will be held February 2-3 at NC State University, Raleigh, NC.