Featured – Page 30 – Seidenberg School News

Call for high school and college students for 2nd Annual Westchester SMART Mobile App Development Bowl

Registration for the 2nd Annual Westchester SMART Mobile App Development Bowl is underway, and we want you to sign up! Think you can develop a mobile app? Enter our competition and show us what you’ve got!

What do I do?

Compete in a team (two person min) to create a mobile app that will help improve the lives of people aged 65 and above, especially in area where their needs are neglected or underserved. Teams can be affiliated with your high school or college, or you can register as an independent team.

Individuals can sign up and Pace will help place you in a team.

What do I win?

Cash prizes, internships, and a collection of high-tech gear!

Registration closes February 12, so hurry up!

Hewlett Packard Enterprise cracks Fortify software at Seidenberg

The Seidenberg School was delighted to welcome Tom Ryan, from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, to come and provide training to our students at Pace University. In attendance were security professionals from the corporate sector as well as undergraduate and graduate students from the Seidenberg School. The training provided tremendous insight into Web vulnerabilities and how to prioritize threats.

Professor Hayes from the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems organized the training and was quoted as saying, “Hands-on training with professional security tools is paramount to the success of our students, especially given that many of those students have taken our online courses. It was heartening to see so many students attend, even before the semester has begun, in order to further their knowledge. Moreover, the participation of corporate IT professionals was an excellent opportunity for Pace students to network with industry experts and understand their challenges with Web security”.

Juan Guzman, a Seidenberg graduate IT major, who attended the training, said, “The HPE Fortify Application training provided information on how insecure applications represent in the world of information assurance however, with the education acquired from Pace University Instructors, Prof. Darren R. Hayes and the latest approach in testing methodologies by Tom Ryan has proven that learning the latest information security is a never ending process. Thank you for the always enlightening path of knowledge”.

The HPE Fortify training was part of the Seidenberg School’s Security and Forensics Week.

SWAG Showcase presents incredible women in technology

On Saturday, December 12, 2015, a large crowd descended on Pace University’s Pleasantville campus for Pace University’s STEM Showcase Day, an event that celebrated Pace’s Women in Technology initiative and the success of its STEM Workshop for high school female students. Appropriately called SWAG, “STEM Women Achieve Greatness,” this Workshop offered a rigorous hands-on approach to design and problem solving using engineering and programming tools to create water robots. The SWAG Workshop was an incredible opportunity made possible through the generosity of GE Capital, whom Pace is proud to have as a partner in our efforts in advancing girls and women in STEM.

Over the course of the Fall semester, 30 high school girls visited Pace on Saturdays to learn how to build and program (using Arduino) a SeaPerch Water Robot capable of taking temperature readings underwater.

Working diligently during these Saturday sessions, and under the guidance of Seidenberg School faculty and staff, the 30 young women made incredible accomplishments that could go a long way in kickstarting their education and careers in STEM.

The showcase began with an introduction by Seidenberg’s Interim Dean, Dr. Jonathan Hill, and followed by welcoming remarks by GE Capital’s CIO, Julie Stansbury. . Attending guests – including many proud parents – viewed video highlights of the journey and successes of the SWAG participants over the past semester (watch it now). Then it was onto SWAG group presentations! Each team of girls got on stage and talked about their experience building a fully functioning underwater robot, discussing their triumphs and disappointments both, and it was clear that the workshops had been a rewarding experience that incorporated new friendship connections into the STEM education. Afterwards, Pace students demonstrated the continuation of hands-on learning in a college environment through group presentations of STEM-based projects, which is part of Pace’s Capstone program.

The festivities continued with a panel discussion featuring female technology leaders and executives in the technology sector. The panel was moderated by VIP and CIO of Pace University Clare van den Blink, and was comprised of Ursuline Foley, CIO Corp. & Enterprise Enablement at XL Catlin; Margaret Honey, President & CEO of the New York Hall of Science; Nasrin Rezai, CIO at GE Capital; and Judy Spitz, CIO at Verizon. The panelists spoke of their experiences and shared profound wisdom sure to be beneficial to the talented high schoolers in the room.

To close out the celebration, Dean Hill welcomed Seidenberg School founder, Dr. Susan Merritt, to the stage. Susan presented each of the girls with a medal for successfully completing the STEM Women Achieve Greatness workshop series here at Pace University.

A big thank you to all of the Pace faculty and staff who made this event possible: Ms. Andreea Cotoranu, Dr. Pauline Mosley, Dr. Matt Ganis, visiting Instructor Ms. Dawn Tucker, Dr. Nancy Hale, Dr. David Sachs, Dr. Susan Feather-Gannon, Dr. Li-Chiou Chen, Dr. Jean Coppola, Dr. Mary Courtney, Deth Sao, Elizabeth Foster, Nancy Treuer, and Susan Downey. A Special Thanks to Mary Ann Errante from Special Events and Lenny Craig from Buildings and Grounds.

We would like to heartily congratulate each of the 30 girls and sincerely hope we see you again when it’s time for you to attend college!

Fireside Chat: Women for Women Tech Entrepreneurs

We are delighted to announce that on December 9th, Seidenberg will host a Fireside Chat with the co-founders of Monarq and Maven, two tech companies with products made for women by women. The event, part of Computer Science Education Week, will take place from 4pm – 6pm in the Seidenberg Lounge.

Diana Murakhovskaya and Irene Ryabaya, co-founders of Monarq, will join Hope Yates, the director of Strategic Partnership at Maven, for a discussion on their careers and companies, the world of startups, and the tech industry.

Murakhovskaya and Ryabaya’s Monarq is a social networking app whose goal is to “inspire women to lead a more meaningful and fulfilling life, spark authentic conversations, and forge new friendships, whether for a day or a lifetime.” The app connects like minded women, allowing them to create new friendships and share experiences. Before developing Monarq, Murakhovskaya and Ryabaya both worked in the financial sector; now, the pair work tirelessly to inspire more women to join the world of startups and technology.

Hope Yates is a member of the team that developed Maven, an e-healthcare app designed specifically for women. The app connects women with healthcare providers, who see their patients over video. During her time at Maven, Hope has led Maven’s recruitment of over 500 healthcare and wellness professionals, its early brand partnerships, and its college campus ambassador program.

Prior to Maven, Hope was a corporate lawyer at Skadden in the Patent Litigation department. In 2012, she left the practice of law to pursue a Master’s Degree in Public Health at Columbia University’s Maiman School of Public Health. While at Mailman, and as an intern for the Division of Mental Hygiene of the New York City Department of Health, she focused on the impact of social, cultural and political influences on women’s mental and physical health.

This event promises to be an inspiration Q&A session. Register today to secure your spot!

Law enforcement will need to pay millions to tackle full disk encryption

By Dr. Darren Hayes, Director of the Seidenberg Cybersecurity Institute.

James Ossipov, Investigator from the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office, returned recently to his alma mater, the Seidenberg School of CSIS, to discuss the future of mobile forensics. Appropriately, Mr. Ossipov returned on Veterans Day; James has a distinguished military career and still continues to serve today. His talk was delivered to prospective computer forensics experts taking a Mobile Forensics Investigations class with Dr. Darren Hayes.

In recent times, Apple has moved from software encryption to hardware encryption. Much to the chagrin of law enforcement, companies, like Apple, have left the keys to decrypt the latest iPhones on the device itself. This makes it virtually impossible for examiners to access the device of an uncooperative suspect. To put it into perspective, the iPhone 9, with its six-digit PIN, has 10,000,000 possible combinations. With each unsuccessful try, Apple has built in an ever-increasing time delay within which you can enter a different PIN. Investigators are experiencing similar challenges with Android devices running Lollipop and Marshmallow. The future of mobile forensics is perplexing but not bleak according to James, who finds these challenges scintillating.

Brute forcing a PIN is sometimes possible with Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), which can be configured to crack a PIN in a fraction of the time it takes a traditional computer to do. The next solution will cost each forensics lab a minimum of $1 million to get into the game. The chip must be removed, and gases applied to remove the casing. Ultimately, an attack will be launched on the chip using an electron microscope and that is where the highest cost lies. Today, some of these high-tech experts are charging $25,000 and even up to $1 million to access smartphones with full-disk encryption. We are certainly entering some interesting times in the world of mobile forensics.

Vinnie Monaco makes Seidenberg history with first PhD in Computer Science

John “Vinnie” Monaco recently made an achievement that is a milestone in Seidenberg School history: he successfully defended his PhD dissertation and became the school’s first ever Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science! We are absolutely delighted with Vinnie’s success and can’t wait to see where his new qualification takes him.

Vinnie’s dissertation, “Time Intervals as a Behavioral Biometric,” isn’t just significant for the Seidenberg School, but it is also important within the field of behavioral biometrics. We asked Vinnie to provide some insight into the research he did:

“My work attempts to identify people based on the way they behave over time,” says Vinnie. “The model I proposed utilizes individual differences in temporal behavior across a range of scales, such as typing, sending emails, initiating financial transactions, or visiting the White House. The significance of this is that only event timestamps are required. This breaks down the privacy barrier that was thought to exist using tools that provide spatial anonymity, such as TOR, and calls for new identity-masking techniques. To be truly anonymous in the 21st century, a person has to not only hide their IP address or location; they have to also mask their behavior in some way.”

Pretty amazing stuff!

Vinnie’s defense was overseen by his dissertation committee (pictured, from left to right, Dr. Lixin Tao, Dr. Vinnie Monaco, Dr. Charles Tappert, and Dr. Meikang Qui).

On his impact at the Seidenberg School, Vinnie said: “I’m proud to have been the first PhD graduate from Seidenberg. I think that the school is starting to attract a greater number of quality researchers, both students and faculty, and I’m confident that the Seidenberg School will continue to be recognized as a leading institution in behavioral cybersecurity research.”

Congratulations to Dr. Monaco on his enormous achievement!