Category: News

Escalating Cyber Threats to the U.S Financial System: Time to Think Outside the Box Conference – Offered in person and virtually

May 4, 2023, 1:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. (Eastern)

In-Person, Van Metre Hall, George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia and via Zoom Webinar

Join Mason’s Center for Assurance Research and Engineering (CARE), the Financial Technology & Cybersecurity Center (Center), Mason’s School of Business, and a host of experts for an executive roundtable discussion on the cybersecurity challenges facing the financial services sector and the solutions that should be pursued.

The increasing number of cyber incursions demonstrates the vulnerabilities of digital technologies and an internet that was not created to be a secure network. There are options for overcoming these increasing vulnerabilities and protecting the financial system. Hear experts discuss current and upcoming issues in cybersecurity and the financial system including:

Agenda

• Financial system innovation and challenges of cybersecurity
• Geopolitics and national motivations for financial system innovation and development
• Crime and criminal enterprises and the financial system
• Role of multilateral institutions such as the IMF and World Bank
• New web concepts to decentralize and segregate financial system critical infrastructure
• Government initiatives to work with private industry
• More secure software, hardware and systems
• The path to global consensus
• The cybersecurity alternatives that financial services companies are developing

Our faculty will be moderated by cybersecurity experts:

• Dr. Jean-Pierre Auffret, George Mason University’s Director, Research Partnerships, School of Business; Director, Center for Assurance Research and Engineering (CARE), College of Engineering & Computing
• Thomas P. Vartanian, Executive Director of the Financial Technology & Cybersecurity Center

 Dr. Ajay Vinzé, Dean of Mason’s School of Business, will provide opening remarks for the program
 Brian Peretti, Director, Domestic and International Cyber Policy, Office of Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection, U.S. Department of Treasury, will make Keynote Remarks

Cybersecurity Experts include:

• Stewart Baker, Of Counsel, Steptoe
• Emily Beam, Senior Vice President, Cyber Risk Institute
• John Carlson, Vice President, Cybersecurity Regulation and Resilience
American Bankers Association
• Dr. Robert Coles, Head of Security Strategy, D S Smith, Former Chief Information Security Officer – Merrill Lynch, National Grid, GlaxoSmithKline
• Steve Crocker, CEO and co-founder, Shinkuro
• James Dever, Cofounder and Principal, Lockhaven Solutions LLC; formerly U.S. Air Force Professor of Cyber Warfare
• John Geiringer, Barack Ferrazzano Kirshbaum & Nagelberg LLP
• Adam Golodner, Managing Partner, AMG Global Cyber Law, PLLC, CEO, Vortex Strategic Consulting, Co-Chair, Trusted Future
• Murray Kenyon, Cybersecurity Partnership Executive, U.S. Bank
• Jenny Menna, Vice President, Threat Management and Response, Humana
• Lisa Quest, Partner, Co-Head of the Public Sector and Policy Practice, Europe, Oliver Wyman, Co-author, Digital Trust: How Banks Can Secure Our Digital Identity;
Joint Report with the International Banking Federation
• Craig Schwartz, Managing Director, fTLD Registry -.Bank
• Marilyn Smith, IT Consultant, Former Chief Information Officer – George Mason University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Scott Volmar, CEO, Intercomputer Network Corp

More event information:
 There is no charge to attend the program either in person or via webinar.
 Please feel free to share this invitation with your colleagues.

Hosted by

George Mason University‘s Center for Assurance Research and Engineering, Financial Technology & Cybersecurity Center and the School of Business

Mason’s College of Engineering and Computing hosts the Center for Assurance Research & Engineering Center (CARE). CARE’s multidisciplinary approach to cybersecurity encompasses the fields of technology, policy, business and leadership. Through partnerships with government and private industry, innovative research is translated into practices and policies used in real-world settings. Research includes security for distributed systems, mobile apps/devices, industrial control systems, and new technologies such as networked medical devices, as well as policies development for securing critical infrastructure and guidance for cybersecurity leadership/governance. For more information, please visit care.gmu.edu.

The Financial Technology & Cybersecurity Center is a nonprofit organization that brings together financial services professionals, regulators, trade association representatives, consumer group representatives, counsel and advisors to discuss, debate, and advocate in regard to financial technology and cybersecurity issues and their regulation. For more information about the Center and to sign up to hear about future events and projects visit www.fintsc.org.

For questions regarding the program, please contact Dr. JP Auffret at [email protected] or Phone at 703-993-5641 or Robert Ledig, FTCC Managing Director at [email protected].

Northern Neck & Middle Peninsula – Mason & NSF Local Government Cybersecurity Partnering Workshop at the Historic Beale Sanctuary in Tappahannock, Virginia

Hosted by George Mason University and National Science Foundation

The workshop is follow-on to the Virginia workshop we held in Richmond in the fall of 2017 and subsequent regional workshops in Roanoke, Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula, and Leesburg, Purcellville, Richmond and more.

Topics and discussion will include: ransomware update, cyber insurance, Commonwealth of Virginia update, CISA update, election security, K – 12, regional SOCs and new DHS and CISA funding opportunities amongst others.

Please RSVP: https://NorthernNeckMiddlePeninsulaMasonNSF.eventbrite.com. No cost to register / attend – Lunch provided.

Who should attend: State and Local Government Administrators, IT and Cybersecurity Administrators, K-12 IT and Cybersecurity Administrators and Police and Emergency IT Managers

For more information: [email protected]

Hosts and Organizers: George Mason University and the National Science Foundation.

About the Workshop:

The workshop builds upon many state and local government cybersecurity workshops held in 2019, 2020, 2021 & 2022 with the objective of discussing current cybersecurity challenges and associated potential partnering and funding opportunities.

The workshop is part of the George Mason-National Science Foundation Cybersecurity City and County Cross Jurisdictional Collaboration project, having the goal of furthering U.S. city and county cybersecurity efforts by developing foundations and policies that enable and foster city and county cybersecurity partnerships.

The Mason-NSF project has co-hosted 13 successful local government cybersecurity partnership workshops in Virginia and West Virginia between 2017 and 2022.

Follow us on Twitter @MasonCyber for more up-to-date discussions on cybersecurity and innovation.

This fall, George Mason University will become the new home of one of the Internet’s venerable monitoring and measurement services: the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) Deployment Maps. This service plays a prominent role in chronicling the evolution of a critical part of Internet security and has been under the stewardship of the Internet Society (ISOC) since 2014. The maps were originally developed by Shinkuro, Inc. with sponsorship by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The transition to Mason is being facilitated with sponsorship from the Internet Society, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and Verisign, Inc.

Eric Osterweil, Assistant Professor in the Mason Department of Computer Science in the College of Engineering and Computing, has been instrumental in bringing the deployment maps to Mason, reaching an agreement to host it at Mason’s Center for Assurance Research and Engineering (CARE, directed by J.P. Auffret) and the Measurable Security Lab (MSL) in the Computer Science department. “We are excited to provide a new home for this important activity,” Osterweil says. “People all over the world access the deployment maps and will now associate them with Mason.”

The deployment maps service tracks how DNSSEC has been deployed worldwide for top-level domains and has been a staple of the Internet security community for years. With almost 17 years of deployment, the maps database is fertile ground for conducting basic research and connecting students with real operational cybersecurity issues. Osterweil notes that the security DNSSEC provides to Internet users is incredibly essential, even if in the background. “The average person will never know about DNSSEC. It’s a lot like saying, ‘What’s the formula of the asphalt I drive on?’ It’s really important, but not important that I have any idea about it.”

DNS is the Internet’s de facto name-mapping system, translating domain names (like gmu.edu) into IP addresses and other identifiers. However, data from the DNS is not inherently secure, as “the IP address of a DNS response can be easily forged, or spoofed,” according to ICANN. DNSSEC enhances DNS with authentication protections, using public-key cryptography, so users can be confident that website visits and emails connect them to entities they want to reach. DNSSEC prevents attacks like cache poisoning and domain redirection, which can result in fraud, malware distribution, and theft of personal, confidential information.

“Internet administrators and researchers anywhere in the world receive weekly email summaries of the current DNSSEC deployment. New services will be added when the system is fully transitioned to George Mason,” says Osterweil. The maps are used by the Internet operations, standards, and policy communities as a resource for the current (and past) state of deployment. “We really want to take the deployment maps service and evolve it into an observatory for this critical infrastructure.” As part of the transition to Mason, Osterweil is establishing an external advisory board, composed of industry stalwarts and chaired by Stephen Crocker (an inductee into the Internet Hall of Fame, author/editor of RFC 1, and founding chair of the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee, SSAC), to help steer and evolve the service. With their cooperation, the deployment maps will be evolved and integrated into a new holistic Internet Namespace Security Observatory in CARE at Mason.

“We are glad that George Mason University is taking on this important work,” said Dan York, director of online content at the Internet Society. “The maps have been a useful way to track the state of DNSSEC deployment over many years. We look forward to seeing how GMU evolves and improves the maps further.”

Osterweil is in talks with multiple industry partners and traditional sources to help support research using the Deployment Maps. Further, he is planning to leverage the service for its research value and use it to enhance teaching, as well as a hands-on experience for student researchers.  “Analyses of historical datasets of critical infrastructure like DNSSEC are critical in understanding large-scale events and behaviors.  The Internet Namespace Security Observatory will synthesize measurable properties of Internet naming systems (such as DNS, DNSSEC, DANE records, etc.) and provide measurable telemetry to evaluate how well dependent systems, protocols, and users are able to validate security protections.”

Osterweil and colleagues announced the transition of the maps publicly at the ICANN’s 74 meeting in The Hague, Netherlands in June.

Founded in 1992 by Internet pioneers, the Internet Society is a global non-profit organization working to ensure the Internet remains a force for good for everyone. Through its community of members, special interest groups, and 130+ chapters around the world, the organization promotes Internet policies, standards, and protocols that keep the Internet open, globally-connected, and secure.

The College of Engineering and Computing at George Mason University is a fast-growing force for innovation in technology and education. The college boasts over 10,000 students in two schools, 37 undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral degree programs, including several first-in-the-nation offerings. As part of a nationally ranked research university, its research teams earned more than $61 million in sponsored research awards in the last 12 months. Located in the heart of Northern Virginia’s technology corridor, the college stands out for its focus on emerging areas including big data, cybersecurity, healthcare technology, robotics and autonomous systems, artificial intelligence and machine learning, signals and communications, and sustainable infrastructure.

ICANN’s mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address – a name or a number – into your computer or another device. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world. ICANN was formed in 1998 as a nonprofit public benefit corporation with a community of participants from all over the world.

Verisign, a global provider of domain name registry services and Internet infrastructure, enables Internet navigation for many of the world’s most recognized domain names. Verisign enables the security, stability, and resiliency of key Internet infrastructure and services, including providing root zone maintainer services, operating two of the 13 global Internet root servers, and providing registration services and authoritative resolution for the .com and .net top-level domains, which support the majority of global e-commerce. To learn more about what it means to be Powered by Verisign, please visit verisign.com.