Center for Information Assurance Updates
Posted on 2022-11-28
The Center for Information Assurance (CfIA) has had several exciting activities this fall.
Prof. Dipankar Dasgupta (pictured here), center director, recently attended the DoD University Consortium for Cybersecurity (UC2) Research Workshop hosted by National Defense University at Fort McNair, Washington, D.C. In response to the DoD-UC2 Request for Information (RFI), Dasgupta formed a team of faculty experts from 15 universities (including Purdue, MIT, and Penn State) and submitted a whitepaper on implementing zero trust at the tactical warfighting edge. This research paper was ranked first by reviewers among all submissions from the national academic community. As the team lead, Dasgupta was invited to present and was well-received by attendees from different federal agencies. “This engagement and collaboration on cybersecurity will open the door for furthering our research and education,” said Dasgupta.
As part of its education efforts, CfIA has developed a web-based course on Remote Home-Office (RHO) security that is currently undergoing pilot testing prior to official release by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as a cybersecurity training course. This six-hour web-based course covers topics and issues directly impacting remote workers including social engineering, video-conferencing platforms, organizational remote work policies, work-from-home cyber hygiene, and much more. The course is funded by the Department of Homeland Security/FEMA and developed under the National Cybersecurity Preparedness Consortium.
On Nov. 4, the UofM hosted the 12th Annual Mid-South Cybersecurity Summit at the FedEx Institute of Technology. The keynote speakers, Augustine Boateng (City of Memphis), Thomas Davis (Rentokil-Initial / Terminix) and Prof. Dipankar Dasgupta (UofM), gave excellent talks. There was also a panel discussion with a guest speaker from the FBI and the UofM faculty on cybersecurity challenges and opportunities in the age of AI.