KU SoS Lablet Quarterly Executive Summary - 2019 Q4

A. Fundamental Research
The University of Kansas Lablet continued work on five projects on resiliency, IoT and cloud privacy, preventing side channel communication, developing semantics and infrastructure for trust, and secure native binary execution. Specifically, we are: (i) developing a method to enable cloud-assisted, privacy-preserving machine learning classification over encrypted data for IoT devices; (ii) reducing micro-architectural side-channels by introducing new OS abstractions while minimally modifying micro-architecture and OS; (iii) developing an epistemology and ontology for framing resilience; (iv) formalizing the remote attestation and defining sufficiency and soundness; and (v) developing a framework for client-side security assessment and enforcement for COTS software. As described in full reports for each project we are making progress on research goals.

B. Community Engagement(s)

KU continues planning for HoTSoS April 7-8 2020 to be held at the Burge Union on the KU campus. The Call for Papers is available and we have seen a few early submissions.  We hope to receive 30 submissions to select 10-12 papers.  We have identified targets keynote presentations including: our Best Paper award winner from last year, Michael Hicks; LtG Fogarty, Commander of the US Army Cybercorps; and Lyle Paczkowski, Sprint CTO.  We are working with NSA to identify one or more speakers from the intelligence community to complement our invitees.  At this time planning is going well.

With our partners Syracuse University, University of Minnesota, and Case Western Reserve University we are executing our NSF I/UCRC planning grant awarded during the last reporting period.  Our topic is secure, high-assurance systems.  This successful proposal is due to leveraging our Science of Security effort.  The KU SoS advisory board plays an essential role with several members committed to funding should a full proposal be funded.

We held a Science of Security Industry Advisory Board meeting  December 6.   Our Scalable Trust project was featured in presentations in addition to work on 5G communications rollout related to security. 

The KU Blockchain Institute (KUBI) student organization hosted a workshop on blockchain and cybersecurity all day October 18.  The workshop featured talks by IBM, FexEx, Ripple Labs and Lockheed Martin.  Additionally, Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple CEO visited the workshop and spoke with students.  The students did exceptionally well and conversations continue with FedEx and IBM.

C. Educational Advances

As noted last quarter, our Cyber Security certificate is approved and initial offerings began during the fall semester.  We anticipate high demand for the certificate among our Computer Science and Interdisciplinary Computing students.  The certificate is not limited to computer science students, but will be difficult to obtain without computer science background.