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.
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)
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 |
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.
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
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
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.