NYC Cybersecurity Day Workshop Series at NYU


Human Elements in Cyber Security

  Registration Form

  Please complete the form if you would like to attend the event.

 

About the workshop

      The NYC Cybersecurity Day workshop is organized by New York University (NYU) in collaboration with universities in the NYC area, including CUNY, Columbia, Cornell, and NYU. The event is primarily organized by students, with sponsorship from Google and NYU's Center for Cybersecurity. Our goal is to unite experts from the NYC region to discuss the future of cybersecurity. This workshop will be the first workshop of the series. The workshop would be a half-day event taking place at NYU Brooklyn's hub for technology and art, bringing together a distinguished group of leading scholars and experts specializing in various aspects of human elements in cybersecurity. Discussions will delve into vital topics such as privacy, network management, ethics in AI systems, legal considerations, and more.

      The workshop's agenda includes three invited talks, with each panelist delivering a short, informal, 30-minute presentation, followed by engaging discussions among participants. Attendees will have the opportunities to actively participate in these discussions and share their valuable insights. For a comprehensive schedule and further details regarding the workshop's speakers and participants, please refer to the information provided below.

Workshop Information

Location: Room 1201, 370 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY

Date: Nov. 20, 2023 (Monday)

Host: New York University, New York

Organizers: Yunfei Ge, Ya-Ting Yang (advised by Prof. Quanyan Zhu)

Program Agenda

 

Time Event
09:00 - 09:15 Welcoming and Breakfast
09:15 - 09:30 Opening Remark
09:30 - 10:00 Robert Thomson - United States Military Academy West Point
Topic: The Forgotten Few: Why Human Factors is the Future of Cybersecurity
Bio and Abstract
10:00 - 10:30 S. Matthew Liao - NYU School of Global Public Health
Topic: Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
Bio and Abstract
10:30 - 10:45 Coffee Break
10:45 - 11:15 Rae Zimmerman - NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
Topic: The Influence of Human Behavior on Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity
Bio and Abstract
11:15 - 12:30 Panel Discussion + Lunch

 

Building Access:

To access the building at 370 Jay Street, please bring your NYU ID or show your government ID to the security at the front desk. Upon entering the building, please take an elevator to the 12th floor. Room 1201 is located on the left side of the front desk.

 

Invited Speakers

Robert Thomson

Bio
      Dr. Robert Thomson is an Associate Professor in the Engineering Psychology Program at the United States Military Academy, is a Cognitive Science Researcher at the Army Cyber Institute, and currently serves as the Dean's Fellow for Research. Dr. Thomson has over 12 years of post-graduate research experience and over 80 invited and refereed academic publications in the domains of computational modeling, intelligence analysis, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. He has been selected for more than $25M in reimbursable research from IARPA (ICArUS), DARPA (XAI, ASED, ANSR, & a SBIR), ONR (FY21 MURI), and DEVCOM.

Topic: The Forgotten Few: Why Human Factors is the Future of Cybersecurity

S. Matthew Liao

Bio
      S. Matthew Liao is Arthur Zitrin Professor of Bioethics, Director of the Center for Bioethics, and Affiliated Professor in the Department of Philosophy at New York University. He is the author of The Right to Be Loved (Oxford University Press, 2015); Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 2015), Moral Brains: The Neuroscience of Morality (Oxford University Press, 2016), and over 50 articles in philosophy and bioethics. He has given a TED talk in New York, a TEDx talk at CERN, and he has been featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, the BBC, Harper’s Magazine, Sydney Morning Herald, Scientific American and other media outlets. He is the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Moral Philosophy, a peer-reviewed international journal of moral, political and legal philosophy.

Topic: Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

Rae Zimmerman

Bio
      Rae Zimmerman is Research Professor and Professor Emerita of Planning and Public Administration at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, following a full-time tenured professorship, and currently directs NYU-Wagner’s Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems. She is an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow, past president and Fellow of the international Society for Risk Analysis (SRA), recipient of two SRA awards: Distinguished Achievement (2019) and Outstanding Service (2015); has held appointments to the Transportation Research Board standing committees currently appointed to the Standing Committee on Systems, Enterprise and Cyber Resilience (AMR40), and had two prior appointments to the NYC Panel on Climate Change. ... Her authored or co-edited books include “Urban Infrastructure” co-edited with J. Heathcott and J. Soffer (U Pittsburgh Press 2022), “Transport, the Environment and Security” (Edward Elgar 2012), several other authored and co-edited books, and about 200 other publications on social, economic, and physical dimensions of infrastructure systems and their vulnerability to natural hazards, climate change, unintentional and intentional disruptions including cyber intrusions. Her human behavior research has been applied to transportation and electric power, and she is currently focusing on human behavior with respect to cyber security dimensions of transportation including autonomous vehicles, behaviors that shape and are shaped by infrastructure services such as transportation and information technology, infrastructure interdependencies, sustainability and resilience, and risk communication. Her research has been supported by over four dozen research grants where she served as PI or co-PI. URL:http://wagner.nyu.edu/zimmerman; B.A. Chemistry (U. of California, Berkeley), Master of City Planning (U. of Pennsylvania), and Ph.D in Planning Columbia University.

Topic: The Influence of Human Behavior on Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity

Abstract
      Information technologies (IT) are extensively integrated within the critical infrastructures upon which society depends. The reliance on IT has been increasing dramatically with the introduction of critical infrastructure technologies such as autonomous vehicles in transportation, automated electric power grids, and water and wastewater automated controls and detection systems. These developments make cybersecurity increasingly important to protect these infrastructures. The ways people react to and behave with respect to cyber threats is an often subtle, unrecognized, and overlooked element in supporting these systems and must be confronted to enhance cybersecurity ... for these infrastructures.
      As a foundation for understanding the role of human behavior in cybersecurity for critical infrastructures, the infiltration and integration of IT into critical infrastructures is first identified along with the history of cyber intrusions in these infrastructures. Second, a typology of human behavior with respect to infrastructure in general and the security of IT in these infrastructures is put forth ranging from no action to dramatically changing the usage of those infrastructures. Human behavior in general influences the performance of critical infrastructures irrespective of IT and the extensive literature on human behavior with respect to critical infrastructures is extrapolated to human behavior with respect to cyber security. Third, ways in which infiltration of perpetrators into these domains can occur are identified from numerous cases or conceptualized where data are unavailable and how human behavior reacts to these threats is put forth, for example, often redirecting how the infrastructures are used. Fourth, how behaviors are shaped by the nature and severity of cyber-driven accidents, the cost of exposure and avoidance, and the existence of safeguards and regulations to prevent accidents are discussed. Finally, behavior is deeply engrained in larger social psychological factors that shape attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, and actions based upon them. These range from fear and dread to the need to control unknown risks. These factors are introduced as possible explanations for human behavior with respect to cyber security.