Dr. S.S. Iyengar is currently the Distinguished University Professor, Founding Director of the Discovery Lab and Director of the US Army funded Center of Excellence in Digital Forensics at Florida International University, Miami. He is also the Distinguished Chaired Professor (Hon.) at National Forensics Sciences University, Gandhinagar, India. He has been involved with research and education in high-performance intelligent systems, Data Science and Machine Learning Algorithms, Sensor Fusion, Data Mining, and Intelligent Systems. Since receiving his Ph.D. degree in 1974 from MSU, USA, he has directed over 65 Ph.D. students, 100 Master’s students, and many undergraduate students who are now faculty at Major Universities worldwide or Scientists or Engineers at National Labs/Industries around the world. He has published more than 900 research papers, has authored/co-authored and edited 32 books. His books are published by MIT Press, John Wiley and Sons, CRC Press, Prentice Hall, Springer Verlag, IEEE Computer Society Press, etc. During the last thirty years More recently in Spring 2021, Dr. Iyengar was awarded a $2.25 M funding for setting up a Digital Forensics Center of Excellence over a period of 5 years (2021-2026). His path breaking discovery known as Brooks-Iyengar algorithm discovered in 1996 is a milestone in his career. This discovery has led to breakthrough in use of sensors in various applications across the globe. By adopting this algorithm, it was possible to use network of sensors which would give out precise outputs, though few of the sensors receive wrong inputs or faulty sensors. This algorithm is relevant even today and has received prestigious “Test of Time” award for its contribution over the decade by IEEE Congress in the year 2019. Dr. Iyengar has received IEEE Fellow award, ACM Fellow, AAAS Fellow, Fellow of Artificial Intelligence AAIA, Fellow, National Academy of Inventors (NAI), Fellow of Institution of Engineers (India) among many awards he has received in his career. He has also received IEEE Technical Achievement Award in 1998. Dr. Iyengar is awarded the Lifetime achievement award at by International Society of Agile Manufacturing at IIT (BHU) in 2012. He has received Lifetime Achievement award from IEEE High Performance Computing in 2019. Dr Iyengar was also a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar and has received several honorary PhDs from around the world. He has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the field of Digital Forensics on November 8, 2022, during the 7th INTERPOL DIGITAL FORENSICS EXPERT GROUP (DFEG) MEETING at National Forensics Sciences University, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India.

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the production and utilization of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. These devices rely on inputs from a variety of non-homogenous sensors to construct an accurate representation of their environment and function adequately. For instance, autonomous vehicles depend on GPS sensors, Lidar, and Radar to perceive their surroundings and generate a representation of their environment. Moreover, when multiple autonomous vehicles operate simultaneously, it is important to ensure a consensus between their estimates to prevent collisions. In this case, accuracy is a local objective that must be met individually by each device (in the sense that their estimates should be accurate in comparison with a ground truth), and consensus is a global objective that must be met among devices (meaning that their estimates should be in agreement). In this talk we characterize the tradeoff between these two objectives: accuracy and consensus and offer a computable optimization problem that addresses these objectives.

Aleksi Peltonen is a researcher in the secure systems group at Aalto University, Finland. His research interests include formal verification and standardization of security protocols, IoT bootstrapping, and 5G security. In his work, Aleksi models and analyzes both well-known, widely deployed protocols and ongoing work under standardization.

Secure communication over open networks is crucial for many modern information systems. Previously centralized architectures are now often dependent on distributed computing and inter-system communication over the Internet. This decentralization of computational systems has increased the need for reliable, fast, and secure communication protocols. A core challenge in designing these protocols is ensuring their correctness and security before broad deployment. Standardized protocols, in particular, need to be thoroughly analyzed in the design phase to avoid unnecessary revisions, which are often slow to deploy comprehensively. Formal verification methods solve this problem by providing a way of analyzing the security of a protocol design even before its implementation. In this talk, I will discuss the importance of security modeling in protocol standardization and give examples of vulnerabilities discovered through formal verification.

Dr. Shalini Kesar is a professor in cybersecurity and Director of MS-CyberSecurity & Information Assurance (CSIA) at Southern Utah University (SUU). She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Delhi, a MPHIL in information systems from De Montfort University, a MSC in analysis, design and management information systems from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Doctorate in information systems from the University of Salford from the UK. Her research expertise is in cybercrime. Dr. Kesar's areas of research and expertise are in GRC of cybersecurity. Dr. Shalini has been in front of the classroom for over 25 years. She has taught at various universities across the world. Her area of expertise includes risk management, governance, risks and compliance in cybersecurity, computer ethics, and women in technology. Her work, research and teaching has led to being recently recognized as "2023 Utah Women in Higher Education Mentorship" award, and "2023 SUU Distinguished Faculty for Global Engagement.

Keeping in mind the scale and speed of transformation in the security ecosystem and the future of the new evolved cloud security, this presentation discusses the need for us (practitioners, academia, and governmental services) to work together while revisiting the very concept of cybersecurity compliance. It is a shared responsibility where the first step starts toward building a culture of cybersecurity. With the increase of remote working, it is even more critical that we rethink even the definition of compliance, educating employees on cybersecurity best practices, Security awareness and education. This will empower employees and instill a culture of cybersecurity and accountability that is much needed. Various frameworks like National Institute for Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework are a great way to create a global directive for cybersecurity. These standards offer guidance on managing information security risks and help organizations improve compliance standards.