Abstract

For decades, Computer and Information Security studies have been
driven by core concepts such as Confidentiality, Integrity, and
Authentication. What would be the core concepts that will drive the
study of the emerging Science of Cyber Security? In this talk, I will
present the novel concept/abstraction of Cybersecurity Dynamics, which
we believe will formulate the ultimately-wanted foundation for the
emerging Science of Cyber Security. Cybersecurity Dynamics is an
extremely multidisciplinary approach to tackling some real-world
problem of the highest importance. I will start with some Cyberseurity
Dynamics models (with emphasis on high-level ideas) and discuss their
usefulness. I will then present a conceptual generalization on
Cybersecurity Dynamics and illustrate how it can benefit from
mathematical techniques such as Dynamical Systems, Stochastic
Processes, Control Theory, Game Theory, and Network Science. I will
discuss some inherent technical barriers that must be adequately
addressed but seem to go beyond the reach of existing mathematical
techniques (i.e., new techniques/skills are needed in order to achieve
the ultimate goal). Please refer to
http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~shxu/socs/index.html for more information
about this exciting research endeavor.


Speaker Bio

Shouhuai Xu is a Full Professor in the Department of Computer Science,
University of Texas at San Antonio. He is the Director of the
Laboratory for Cybersecurity Dynamics
(http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~shxu/LCD/index.html) at UTSA. His research is
primarily in making cyberspace more secure and trustworthy. He is
especially interested in mathematical modeling and analysis of
cybersecurity, and devising practical cyber defense technology that
include both provably-secure cryptographic protocols and advanced
cyber defense mechanisms. His research has been funded by AFOSR, ARO,
NSF and ONR. He is a Program Committee co-chair of NSS'15 and was a
Program Committee co-chair of Inscrypt'13. He has served on the
Program Committees of 100+ international conferences/workshops. He is
currently an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Dependable and
Secure Computing (IEEE TDSC) and IEEE Transactions on Information
Forensics and Security (IEEE T-IFS). He earned his PhD in Computer
Science from Fudan University.