There were revelations brought forward by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. There were high-profile hacking attacks directed at Facebook, Twitter and other prominent U.S. domains. And there was the theft of personal financial information from companies including Target and Mt. Gox, one of the largest traders of the digital currency Bitcoin.
Computer information and network security have taken center stage over the past year, and will be hot topics on Friday, April 11, as the University of Oregon's Department of Computer and Information Science sponsors its fourth annual Oregon Computer Security Day on the UO campus.
The event – which begins at 8:40 a.m. in the auditorium of the Jaqua Center for Student Athletes – will include discussion of industry and government efforts to secure large amounts of personal information, as information storage and computing power continues to move toward scalable, cloud-based formats.
Oregon Computer Security Day will host speakers from academic, industry and government research groups who are working at the forefront of computer and network security. The speakers will lead discussions on everything from examining future trends in computer security, to understanding cyber security within the federal government, to new research in authentication mechanisms and securing systems and data. There will be opportunities to engage with the speakers and other attendees.
Speakers include Robert Cunningham, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory; Elena S. Peterson, U.S. Department of Energy Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Roger R. Schell, University of Southern California; and Ramarathnam Venkatesan of Microsoft Research.
This year’s guest speakers represent decades of collective experience with leading government and industry organizations – including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Institute for Information Protection (I3P) and the National Security Agency (NSA. They hold patents in cryptography, authentication, bioinformatics and more.
The event will also feature a student poster session and faculty-led discussions to provide more information on research initiatives in the UO’s Department of Computer and Information Science. Participants will have the opportunity to meet each other in breakout sessions, where they will engage in discussions about current trends and research in information security.
Admission is free, but registration in advance is required and space may be limited. To register, contact the organizers at secday@cs.uoregon.edu. Oregon Security Day is supported by funding from the National Science Foundation and by support from Galois, a Portland-based systems security and cryptography firm, and Symantec, a national mobile and cloud security developer with offices in the Eugene-Springfield area.
- from the Office of Research, Innovation and Graduate Education