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RDAAPS first annual international conference on research in the broadly defined area of data analytics

Call for papersReconciling Data Analytics, Automation, Privacy, and Security: A Big Data Challenge (RDAAPS) 2020 conference
http://rdaaps.com/conferences/rdaaps20/
July 15 – 17, 2020, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, CANADA
RDAAPS is the first annual international conference on research in the broadly defined area of data analytics. It brings together researchers from academia, industry, and the public sector to present and discuss various aspects of data analytics, including privacy, security, and automation. This venue is meant to bring together stakeholders whose interests lie at the interface of these concerns, providing a platform for integrating the needs of industry with state-of-the-art scientific advancements, and inspiring original research on solving enterprise data challenges. RDAAPS seeks papers presenting original research in the areas including, but not limited to:
Big Data Analytics for Decision Making– New models and algorithms for data analytics- Scalable data analytics- Optimization methods in data analytics- Theoretical analysis of data systems- Analytical reasoning systems- Decision making under uncertainty- Learning systems for data analytics- Large-scale text, speech, image, or graph processing systems
Accountable Data Analytics– Privacy-aware data analytics- Fairness in data analytics- Interpretable and transparent data analytics- Data analytics incorporating legal and ethical factors
Strings in Data Analytics– Patterns in Big Data- Data compression- Bioinformatics- Algorithms and data structures for string processing- Useful data structures for Big Data- Data structures residing on secondary storage
Security in Data Analysis– Traceability of decision making- Models for forecasting cyber-attacks and measuring impact- Data usage in mounting security threats- Data analytics for better situational awareness
Domain knowledge modelling and generation– Novel ontology representations- Scalability of domain-based reasoning on big data- Modelling and analyzing unstructured data sets
Automation for data analytics, security, and privacy in manufacturing– Application of data analysis in manufacturing- Big data in Industry 4.0- Privacy and security in manufacturing
Challenges of automation of data analytic processes– Case studies of the automation of data analytics processes- Architecture for data analytics and security- Built-in privacy and security in data analytics automation
Submission instructions:Successful papers will address real research challenges through analysis, design, measurement, and deployment of data systems. The program committee will evaluate each paper using metrics that are appropriate for the topic area. All submissions must describe original ideas, not published or currently under review for another conference or journal. 
Submissions must follow the formatting guidelines of IEEE proceedings, and be submitted electronically as a PDF file through the EasyChair author interface for the RDAAPS conference (link to follow soon). Submissions not adhering to the specified format and length may be rejected immediately.
The submitted papers can include up to 8 pages in IEEE format, including references, appendices, and figures. Publication:All accepted papers will be published in the IEEE conference proceeding.

Important dates:– Deadline for abstract submission: March 23rd, 2020- Deadline for full paper submission: March 29th, 2020- Notification to authors: May 15th, 2020- Deadline for camera ready version: June 7th, 2020
We look forward to receiving your submissions!
Best regards,
General ChairsM. Jamal Deen, McMaster UniversityRidha Khedri, McMaster University
Steering CommitteeRidha Khedri, McMaster UniversityWendy MacCaull, St. Francis Xavier UniversityMike Grainge, Adlib Software, Vice President Product EngineeringNeerja Mhaskar, McMaster University
Organizing CommitteeRidha Khedri, McMaster University, Local OrganizerNeerja Mhaskar, McMaster University, Local OrganizerAndrew LeClair, McMaster University, PublicistAlicia Marinache, McMaster University, TreasurerHassan Ashtiani, McMaster University, Publication Co-ChairWenbo He, McMaster University, Publication Co-ChairMike Grainge, Adlib Software, Industrial Liaison
Program Committee ChairsArash Habibi Lashkari, University of New BrunswickRidha Khedri, McMaster UniversityNeerja Mhaskar, McMaster University
Program Committee Members (Current confirmed list)Ken Barker, University of CalgarySolon Pissis, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI)Wing-Kin Sung, National University of SingaporeAndrew Malton, Blackberry Ltd.Dan Feng, Beijing University of Posts and TelecommunicationsWendy MacCaull, St. Francis Xavier UniversityKamel Adi, Université du Québec en OutaouaisJian Li, Futurewei TechnologiesMaxime Crochemore, King’s College London and Université Paris-EstJason Jaskolka, Carleton UniversityClaude Baron, LAAS-CNRS, INSAFazle Rabbi, University of BergenYan Liu, Concordia UniversityWilliam F. Smyth, McMaster UniversityCostas Illiopoulos, King’s College LondonNoman Mohammed, University of ManitobaLaurence T. Yang, St. Francis Xavier UniversityHideo Bannai, Kyushu UniversityDon Adjeroh, West Virginia UniversityShunsuke Inenaga, Kyushu UniversityNadia Pisanti, Universita di PisaFei Chiang, McMaster UniversityWenbo He, McMaster UniversityHassan Ashtiani, McMaster UniversityJamal Deen, McMaster UniveristyMourad Debbabi, Concordia UniversityGiovanni Livraga, University of MilanMichael Soltys, California State University Channel Islands

My new paper on cloudifying the curriculum with AWS

This new paper was just posted as a technical report at Cornell’s arXiv (https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.04020), but it will be submitted for publication in the future. PDF of the paper.

From the abstract: The Cloud has become a principal paradigm of computing in the last ten years, and Computer Science curricula must be updated to reflect that reality. This paper examines simple ways to accomplish curriculum cloudification using Amazon Web Services (AWS), for Computer Science and other disciplines such as Business, Communication and Mathematics.

In this paper we present the cloudification journey at our institution, California State University Channel Islands, where we have thriving programs under the department of Computer Science, that include Computer Science, Information Technology, Mechatronics Engineering, and a Masters program in Computer Science. We have partnered with AWS Academy and AWS Educate to bring cloud expertise to the students we serve – about 600 majors, in a campus of over 7,000 students. The paper gives the details.

Software Engineering Salaries Jump, Demand for AR/VR Expertise Skyrockets

It’s a good time to be an engineer specializing in augmented reality or virtual reality. That’s the conclusion of the latest report by job site Hired, which just released its annual state of software engineers report. To compile its data, Hired reviewed 400,000 interview requests from 10,000 companies made to 98,000 job seekers throughout 2019.

Demand for AR and VR engineers, in the form of job postings on Hired’s site, was 1400 percent higher in 2019 than in 2018. Salaries for engineers in these specialties climbed into the $135,000 to $150,000 range, at least in the largest U.S. tech hubs. Demand for gaming engineers and computer vision engineers is also on the upswing; both climbed 146 percent in 2019.

Meanwhile, demand for Blockchain expertise, a shooting star in 2018 with 517 percent greater demand than in the previous year, slowed dramatically, increasing only 9 percent.

Source: Software Engineering Salaries Jump, Demand for AR/VR Expertise Skyrockets – IEEE Spectrum

Position at Port Hueneme of interest to CS and IT students

Competitive Vacancy Announcement:
 
Title: Information Technology Specialist (SYSADMIN) 
Grade: GS-2210-11/12
Bargaining Unit Position: Yes
Department: Littoral & Strike Warfare Department, Code L20/L30/L40/L50
Org Code: L00
Duty Station:
 Port Hueneme, CA and San Diego, CA and Mayport, FL
Position Sensitivity: Non-Critical-Sensitive
Selection Official: stacie.jue
Selection Official Phone: 8052287679
Selection Official Email: stacie.jue@navy.mil

Job Summary:
Interested applicants must follow the directions in the “How to Apply” section of this flyer

It is anticipated that there will be a vacancy for an Information Technology Specialist (SYSADMIN), GS-2210-11/12 position at NSWC PHD, Port Hueneme, CA at the Littoral & Strike Warfare Department within the various division. The incumbent serves as an Information Technology Specialist (Systems Administration) and Subject Matter Expert for shipboard and land-based networks, Information Technology (IT) systems, and software.

NSWC PHD is located approximately 60 miles north of Los Angeles near the communities of Oxnard, Ventura and Camarillo, CA, and is on the Naval Base Ventura County. There are also opportunities for positions located in Port Hueneme, CA and San Diego, CA and Mayport, FL

Interested Applicants must submit resumes/application packages to:

NSWCPHD.L.Computer@navy.mil

Facsimile applications will not be considered.

All resumes/applications must be received no later than the close date of this flyer.

It is the applicant’s responsibility to verify that all information in their resume and documents, are received, legible, and accurate. HR will not modify answers/documents submitted by an applicant.

Failure to submit a complete application package will result in an ineligible rating and loss of consideration.

How To Apply (follow USA Jobs link):  https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/558914600

Our paper with Neerja Mhaskar on logic of stringology appeard in Discrete Applied Math

In this paper, A new formal framework for Stringology is proposed, which consists of a three-sorted logical theory $latex S$ designed to capture the combinatorial reasoning about finite strings. We propose a language $latex L_S$ for expressing assertions about strings, and study in detail two sets of formulas $latex \Sigma_0^B$, a set of formulas decidable in polytime, and $latex \Sigma_1^B$, a set of formulas with the property that those provable in $latex S$ yield polytime algorithms.

AWS Educate workshop at CI

Today, Friday January 24, 2020, we are hosting an AWS Educate workshop on the CSU Channel Islands campus, on Cloudifyig the Curriculum. The workshop will be held in Broome Library (easily recognizable as the only modern building on campus – here is its location on the campus map: http://maps.csuci.edu/?id=502#!m/189826).

Once you are in Broome library, please go to the second floor, to room number 2330. We will be starting at 9:30am, and finishing at 3:30. We will be catering both a continental breakfast and a lunch at around 12:30pm.

The registered guests can pick up their parking passes from Placer Hall (see map below). With the passes the guests can park in any lot “A”.

My five recommendations for readings in Cybersecurity

Over the last year I read a dozen excellent books on Cybersecurity, and I want to recommend some of them – these are books accessible to the general audience and which read like good thrillers, and thus will make time go by faster sitting in airplanes and other modes of transportation. It could be said that all these books focus on malware and that to some degree sensationalize cybersecurity, but that is part of their charm, and that is what makes them ‘page turners’. However, it is important to remember that there is nothing magical about cyberattacks, and it is not surprising that state actors want to wield the Internet, specifically the Internet of Things (IoT) as a weapon. IT systems are complex, and we do not yet have proven methods to write reliable (i.e., correct) software, and hence our vast IT infrastructure is of course vulnerable to attack, and all is fair in love and war. All books however, stress the need to be prepared, and the need to emphasize defense as well as attack capabilities. All the books have significant overlaps (e.g., they all mention Stuxnet).


Sandworm

My first recommendation is Andy Greenberg’s Sandworm, a book that came out in 2019, which details all that is known about the hacker group known as Sandworm, a group that is responsible for major attacks such as NotPetya. Andy Greenberg is such a good writer, and presents the geopolitical context in such vivid detail, that I found myself having a mental conversation with him during the reading of the book. This book is not intended for the Computer Scientist who is interested in the technical details of the attacks, but those details can always be found on the Internet. The description of the political situation in Ukraine is a little simplistic, and I do not agree with the sobriquet of Poland as imperialist toward Ukraine (much of western Ukraine was simply Polish before World War II, such as the city of Lwów), but the history of that part of the world is complex, and this is not the book to unwind it. I have always been an avid reader of the late Harold Bloom, and one of his lessons to writers has been to be sympathetic even to the villain in your story; I feel that Russia’s concerns in eastern Ukraine (Crimea) could have been presented as part of the story.


The Perfect Weapon

David E. Sanger’s The Perfect Weapon, published in 2018, is a comprehensive overview of how world’s powers are deploying digital sabotage. Sanger is the national security correspondent for the New York Times and also teaches national security policy at the Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. This book is a study of how cyberweapons are transforming geopolitics, and that they are a game changer of the same caliber as the atomic bomb was at the time of its invention. Sanger was the author of the New York Times article in May 2012 that first attributed the Stuxnet malware (known as the Olympic Games operation to the US intelligence community), to the Obama administration’s secret order to deploy increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities at Natanz. A well researched, well written book, with a gripping narrative, a great place to start understanding – and demystifying – Cyberweapons.


Click Here to Kill Everybody

Bruce Schneier’s Click Here to Kill Everybody, with the subtitle Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World, is a fantastic read on Cybersecurity in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT). Bruce Schneier is of course very well know in the Cybersecurity community (www.schneier.com) and he is the author of one of the first modern books on Cryptography (Applied Cryptography, first edition 1996). I liked many things about this book, but especially the author’s insights on the philosophy of Cybersecurity. For example:

  • Large Attack Surface problem, where the defender has to secure the entire attack surface from every possible attack all the time, but the attacker only has to get lucky once. During my PhD, and for many years after, I worked in the field of proof complexity, where the goal is to study the power of logical theories; this reminds me of a profound observation in mathematics, that universal statements (∀-statements) are often much more difficult to prove than existential statements (∃-statements). A ∀-statement frequently requires the full power of induction, while ∃-statements can be frequently proven with a simple construction (this is a very high-level intuition driven statement).
  • Complex systems are very versatile, flexible and so they have lots of options. A classic safe is easy to see if it is opened or closed; yank the handle. But checking whether the permissions in your OS are set correctly is difficult.
  • Attribution: it is very difficult to do digital forensics; who penetrated your system? We may all “know” where the attack originated, but the evidence is usually scant.
  • And other concepts such as Skills vs Abilities, Small Gains, Skills Gap and Public Education, which the interested reader can find in the book.

Countdown to Zero Day

Kim Zetter’s Countdown to Zero Day – and older book (2014) based on an even earlier article by the same author in Wired magazine (2011) – describes in great detail the geopolitics, but also to some extent the mechanics, of the Stuxnet malware (mentioned in some of the books listed above). Stuxnet was a sophisticated worm, developed by the US and Isreaeli governments around 2005 (code name Olympic Games), aimed at the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz (Iran), and discovered by the Infosec community around 2010. The worm attacked PLCs Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) manufactured by the German company Siemens and deployed at the Natanz facility to run centrifuges. There are many interesting aspects to Stuxnet; for example, the first major deployment of a cyberweapon, the attack on the IoT, etc. The book is very detailed, and while this can help experts piece together a very detailed picture of what happened, it could be a little bit dry at times to the casual reader. I would suggest to read this book not being afraid to skip certain parts, especially those that might sound repetitive, or parts with which the reader is familiar already. Still, this book is in my opinion the definitive companion to the Stuxnet malware. For those interested to go even deeper, please keep in mind that there are public repositories containing the Stuxnet code: https://github.com/micrictor/stuxnet


Cyberwar

Richard A. Clarke’s Cyberwar is the oldest (2010) and least technical book on this list, but very important as it presents Cyberwar from a policy / national security perspective. Clarke has served in several administrations, starting with president Reagan, and has thought deeply about the national security perspective of all things Cyber. It should be noted that this book has been written with Robert K. Knake as co-author. Often, in the field of Cybersecurity, experts are siloed, and those with command of the technical aspects of the field, have little understanding of, say, legal / policy aspects. This book, while interesting in itself, also has the advantage of defining various concepts in a precise manner that can lead to meaningful policy discussions.