Guest Speaker

Monther Aldwairi

Monther Aldwairi is an associate professor at the College of Technological Innovation at Zayed University since the fall of 2014. He received his B.S. in electrical engineering from Jordan University of Science and University (JUST) in 1998, and his M.S. and PhD in computer engineering from North Carolina State University (NCSU), Raleigh, NC, in 2001 and 2006, respectively. Prior to joining ZU, he was an Assistant and then Associate Professor of Computer Engineering at Jordan University of Science and Technology. He served as the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Computer and Information Technology from 2010 to 2012 and was the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs in 2009. In addition, he was an Adjunct Professor at New York Institute of Technology (NYiT-AMM) from 2009 to 2012. He worked at NCSU as Post-Doctoral Research Associate in 2007 and as a research assistant from 2001 to 2006. He worked as a system integration engineer for ARAMEX from 1998 to 2000. Dr. Aldwairi’s research interests are in network and web security, intrusion detection and forensics, cloud computing, reconfigurable architectures, artificial intelligence and pattern matching.

CCS-AD has been working in the past year to develop a high quality research program that addresses challenges relevant to the UAE and the region. To address this goal CRISSP-AD in conjunction with KUSTAR are organizing a day long meeting to explore research collaborations among researchers in UAE universities who work in the broad field of cyber security and privacy. The goal of this meeting is to develop ambitious and high impact research projects and to explore how they can be supported to generate research results of highest quality. More specifically, we would like to discuss how to develop joint funding proposals, build testbeds, and gain access to data that could be used for evaluating our research results.

Hardware security and trustworthy hardware are on the brink of a revolution and this workshop and the resulting special issue/book seek to showcase the latest advances in state-of-the-art trustworthy hardware and identify the most promising research frontiers in IC and system security. The scope of this workshop spans critical aspects of IC and system security ranging from theoretical and conceptual foundations, synthesis, testing and verification, to modeling and optimization to case studies. From a platforms perspective this workshop/special issue will cover IC and system security and trust issues in ASICs, COTS, FPGAs, microprocessors/DSPs, and embedded systems. Other topics of interest include: Hardware security primitives (circuitry and mechanisms) including IDs, PUFs, PPUFs, public TRNGs, side channels, dual rail logic, controlled aging, IC conditioning, watermarking, fingerprinting, and obfuscation; Hardware-based security protocols including DRM (IC metering, enabling and disabling), trust guarantees, authentication, privacy, hardware-based PKC; Hardware attacks: creation, detection, characterization, and compensation; Forensic and reverse engineering (e.g. process, IC, models, algorithms); Computer aided design (CAD) techniques for IC and System Security; Trusted synthesis and compilation using untrustworthy CAD tools; Trusted hardware based system security; Impact of nano and other emerging technologies on hardware-based system security; Hardware-supported primitives and protocols for operating systems and utility software.

In almost all areas of national security, new personnel are instructed in the importance of understanding the lessons of history in order to better tackle current issues. Yet this practice has been all but ignored when it comes to cyber. Cyber history is believed to be irrelevant as the field is constantly evolving and new technologies and methodologies emerge every day. In fact, cyber has an extensive history that reaches far beyond the attacks on the Estonian networks in 2007. Events that transpired in the 1980s and after have taught the cyber community many important lessons. By implementing these lessons into the context of today’s crises, policy and decision makers can make better more informed decisions. Jason Healey will discuss the history of conflict in cyberspace, lessons learned for the future, and the growing importance of cyberspace in conflicts around the world.

This one-day conference on cybersecurity threats and opportunities in the Gulf region, is jointly hosted by the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative and NYU Abu Dhabi’s Center for Cyber Security. Recent high profile cyber breaches in the region’s finance and energy sectors have highlighted the need to focus on cybersecurity and its importance to state and economic stability. The United Arab Emirates’ unique position as an economic, energy, and transportation hub makes cyber issues even more pressing. This event will bring together local and US experts from the government and private sector to address these pressing issues at a full-day conference in Abu Dhabi.Topics expected to be covered include: securing energy, finance, and transportation infrastructure; growing a cybersecurity workforce; national security cyber issues; and regional threat capabilities and intent.

Caerus from Emirates International School Meadows in Dubai and the team from Delhi Private School in Dubai were our top finalists. The two teams received dan expense-paid trip to New York City and competed in the 2015 CSAW @ NYU HSF competition in November of 2014. We thank all the students and their mentor teachers for participating in the High School Forensics challenge. This year’s HSF competition has been one of the largest high school cyber security events in the world! We hope everyone had fun and found the challenge to be a worthwhile learning activity. For more information on please visit the HSF site.