2022 CCI Integrated Security Seminar Series, Mar 14

About the event

The Commonwealth Cyber Initiative in Southwest Virginia (CCI SWVA) and The Integrated Security Education and Research Center (ISERC) are hosting a seminar series focusing on integrated security. The seminar will feature two speakers with Q&A sessions following each presentation.

Session 1: Secure Near Data Processing

Speaker: Wenjie Xiong is an assistant professor and Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Fellow in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. Xiong's research explores hardware security, wand how to leverage hardware features to enhance the security of computer systems as well as identify and mitigate security vulnerabilities that are rooted in hardware design. There are a number of data protection schemes for applications running on the processor—but how do you protect applications running on accelerators? During this talk, Xiong will introduce a novel cryptographic scheme that allows data processing in untrusted memory with confidentiality and integrity protected.

Session 2: The Security Team at the Top: The Board of Directors

Speaker: Anthony Vance is a professor and Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Fellow in the Department of Business Information Technology of the Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech.  He will present his research investigating the board of directors — the security team that few people think about that has the potential to be the most powerful and influential security team in the organization. Together with Michelle Lowry from Virginia Tech, Vance explored the challenges that chief information security officers (CISOs) face in meaningfully engaging with the board of directors. They also investigated how CISOs can gain strategic importance in supporting and advising the board, and the ways that CISOs can help boards realize their potential as the most powerful security team in the organization.