Grey Science

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Monday, January 28, 2019 - 4:30 pm5:00 pm

Anita Nikolich, Computer Science, Illinois Institute of Technology

Abstract: 

Traditional scientific disciplines have a long history of discoveries made by amateur researchers or those with no formal scientific training. The cybersecurity community has many parallels. Papers at serious academic conferences and talks at "hacker" conferences contain surprising overlaps in topics and methods. But academics publish in formal, peer reviewed journals that are often behind a paywall, while non-academics produce artifacts in the realm of ephemeral "grey literature". The incentives for each group differ enough that no serious effort has been put forth to draw them together. How can we create feedback loops between the academic community, cybersecurity operators and underground security researchers who may not even think of themselves as "researchers" in order to work together on important security and privacy topics?

Anita Nikolich, Illinois Institute of Technology

Anita is a Visiting Fellow in Computer Science at Illinois Institute of Technology. She served as a Cybersecurity Program Director at the National Science Foundation, and has held a variety of research, security and infrastructure roles in academia, industry and government. While at NSF she expanded the Transition to Practice program to draw upon innovative basic computer science and security research to solve complex, real world problems. She currently does work in cryptocurrency security as well as the impact of data brokers on personal privacy.

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