Human Aspects

Cryptographic systems often rely on the secrecy of cryptographic credentials; however, these are vulnerable to eavesdropping and can resist neither a user's intentional disclosure nor coercion attacks where the user is forced to reveal the credentials. Conventional biometric keys (e.g., fingerprint, iris, etc.), unfortunately, can still be surreptitiously duplicated or adversely revealed. In this research, the PIs argue that the most secure cryptographic credentials are ones of which the users aren't even aware.

Security policies often base access decisions on temporal context (e.g., time of day) and environmental context (e.g., geographic location). Access control policies for operating systems frequently consider execution context (e.g., user ID, program arguments). However, little has been done to incorporate user expectation context into security decision mechanisms. Text artifacts provide a source of user expectation context.

This proposal will develop an educational link between the Yakama Nation and the University of Washington at Bothell to enhance Cybersecurity education for Native students using virtual laboratories. The laboratories will use scenarios to provide hands-on experience in the practical aspects of Cybersecurity. The project will use a new approach to Cybersecurity education that focuses on established success indicators for Native students. The project will focus on an educational design that appeals to the students in areas that are defined as key indicators of academic success.

This research applies anthropological methods to study cybersecurity analysts working in Security Operation Centers (SOC). These analysts process large amounts of data while handling cyber threats. The job requires intelligence and high levels of skills but has many mundane/repetitive aspects. Adequate tool support is largely lacking and many of the skills and procedures involved are uncodified and undocumented resulting in a large body of "tacit knowledge." This project places researchers trained in both cybersecurity and anthropology into SOCs, working side by side with the analysts.

For nearly 40 years, the United States has faced a critical problem: increasing demand for energy has outstripped the ability of the systems and markets that supply power. Today, a variety of promising new technologies offer a solution to this problem. Clean, renewable power generation, such as solar and wind are increasingly available. Hybrid and plug-in electric vehicles offer greater energy efficiency in transportation.