ITI hosts successful summer school on cyber security

7/31/2013 9:01:00 AM ITI Staff

ITI hosted a summer school on formal methods for the science of security last week, bringing together professionals and students working in the area of cyber security.

Written by ITI Staff

ITI hosted a summer school on formal methods for the science of security last week, bringing together professionals and students working in the area of cyber security.

The mission of the week was to train people in cyber security techniques, and especially techniques that use formal methods, according to school director José Meseguer. This particular school was aimed at graduate students who will be future security professionals and researchers, as well as current security professionals, including faculty members and those in industry.

Fred Schneider of Cornell University gives a talk titled "Blueprint for a Science of Security" during the ITI Formal Methods for the Science of Security Summer School.
Cyber security is understood both by people in government, industry and the public in general to be a very vital concern because now all kinds of physical infrastructure, economy and vital parts of society are depending on computer systems and could be compromised, Meseguer said. There is a strong agreement that this is a problem and it's a problem that's not been solved at all.

Over 60 people attended the school, which was held on the University of Illinois campus on July 22 - 26. According to Meseguer, this is the first time experts have gathered from around the world in a summer school setting in the U.S. to discuss formal methods and security.

We wanted the students to take away a broad and richer understanding of the different problems in security and the different issues and methods used to increase security, Meseguer said. The goal was for them to come out with a full, more complete vision of the problems, solutions and techniques that can be used to make them more effective in future work dealing with these problems in cyber security.

Students heard lectures from leading experts from around the world, such as Fred Schneider of Cornell University, Felix Klaedtke of ETH-Zurich, Switzerland and Gilles Barthe of IMDEA-Software in Spain. They covered topics such as lying and authentication, computer-aided cryptographic proofs and hyperproperties.

From an academic point of view, most of us are graduate students and most concentrate on research in our own topic without worrying about how it's related or applied to other fields and real world situations, said ThanhVu Nguyen, a computer science graduate at the University of New Mexico who attended the summer school. Events such as this one helps motivate our study, shows that our studies could be useful in the real world and shows us what other students are working on.

Lectures from the Formal Methods for the Science of Security Summer School can be viewed on the school agenda.


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This story was published July 31, 2013.