Featured – Page 31 – Seidenberg School News

The Seidenberg School welcomes James Gabberty as Associate Dean

As of November 1, Dr. James Gabberty has assumed the position of Associate Dean at the Seidenberg School. Dr. Gabberty has a wealth of experience that made him the ideal candidate for the position.

He will be working to drive more sponsored research and internship opportunities to Seidenberg. He will also be focusing on the creation of a cybersecurity certification program with Pace Adult and Continuing Education.

Exciting things are happening at the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Education Systems, and we can’t wait to announce them as they take place!

Seidenberg Students Involved in Dark Research

There is a lot of buzz about the Dark Web these days, especially after the highly-publicized take-down of the Silk Road. Concerns about the Dark Web are not just limited to drug markets, illegal arms, sinister hitmen and notorious hackers for sale but impacts our own personal well-being. Companies have been investing heavily in cyber intelligence tools and hiring new employees to scour the Internet for threats as well as the Dark Web.

Students at the Seidenberg School have been delving into the dark reaches of the Dark Web and assisting private and public sector entities to better understand organizational threats. This is especially important because stolen personal information, like payment card numbers, health records and other stolen data is actively marketed in bulk quantities. Cataloging and searching these marketplaces has been a challenge due to the lack of indexing Tor sites and the fact that these sites come and go on a daily basis. This is where the Seidenberg students’ research becomes vital to assisting law enforcement and the intelligence community.

Tor site for selling stolen payment cards

One member of the student researcher team said: “Researching the dark web has highlighted the importance of operational security to protect myself and my data.

“This experience has shown the important relationship between of academic and law enforcement, as criminals are exploiting the same vectors university students are researching. Students can personally benefit from this relationship by having a real world application for our research, and know that our findings can stop the activities we investigate.

“The dark web has shown me how vast the internet is and the potential for good and bad it has. It is a very exciting time to be a security researcher.”

The students undertaking the project are doing so in the Internet Technology class IT-662 Web & Internet Security.

The Dark Web is a vast chasm and DARPA’s Memex program is indicative of how the government has become more dependent than ever on university researchers to find the terrorists, organized criminal gangs and enterprising thieves on the Dark Web.

What is startling from our initial findings is that only a very small percentage of Tor sites, operating criminal marketplaces, are ever taken down with the perpetrators being brought to justice. It’s a daunting task but Pace University is doing its part to identify the nefarious actors on the Dark Web.

Experts to talk Threat Intelligence at cybersecurity symposium

On Friday, October 30, 2015, we welcome a panel of renowned experts who will speak about threat intelligence to an audience of more than 100 students who are passionate about cyber security and digital forensics.

During the sold-out event, organized by Dr. Darren Hayes, the Director of the Seidenberg Cybersecurity Institute, we will hear from incredible speakers who will share their experiences across the field:

Joel Krauss, the Director of Strategic Information & Crisis Management for the International Rescue Committee, will be giving a talk called Human Intelligence: A Holistic Approach. This talk will focus on leveraging organic intelligence-gathering assets within one’s own organization in order to answer organizational risk information (ORI) priorities.

Ian Amit, Vice President at ZeroFox, will give a presentation titled Actionable Threat Intelligence. Ian’s talk will discuss how to create a customized, organization-specific threat intelligence feed, which in turn will be used to actively increase the security posture of the organization in a measurable way.

Joshua Philipp, who is a National Security Reporter, China News, at Epoch Times, will be an explanation of the vast system behind Chinese economic espionage, and how it is carried out by military, civilian, government, business, and academic sectors in China. The talk is called Cyber and Beyond: The Inner Workings of Chinese Economic Espionage – quite the exciting title!

The final talk will be by Lenny Zeltser, Product Management Director, NCR Corp, with an Introduction to Malware Analysis. In this session, Lenny Zeltser demonstrates key aspects of this process, walking attendees through behavioral analysis of a real-world Windows malware specimen by using several free tools. He will demonstrate practical techniques in action and how malware analysis will help to triage the incident to assess key capabilities of the malicious software.

The event will take place from 12:15-5:30 at Lecture Hall North and promises to be an incredible afternoon of presentations, discussion, and learning.

Thinking about attending the Seidenberg School? Join us for the Undergraduate Open House in NYC

If you missed the Undergraduate Open House in Pleasantville, another opportunity to check out why you should consider Pace is coming up in NYC. The fall Open House will take place on Sunday, November 15, and we are aiming to provide a fantastic experience that showcases what greatness awaits you at Pace University.

At the Pleasantville event, potential applicants attended in swathes to enjoy tours, presentations and an open floor where all of their questions could be answered. Plenty of the Seidenberg faculty and staff were on hand, as well as a significant number of wonderful Seidenberg students who came to spread the word to prospective students. The Open House was a massive success, and we’d like to repeat the show in NYC.

Here’s a rundown of what you can expect to find at the NYC Open House:

Campus and resident hall tours
Students sharing their internship and professional experiences
In depth information about Seidenberg majors (and other Pace majors!)
Student clubs and activities
Financial aid and scholarships advice
Fun!

For registration, directions and program information, head over to the main Pace website. And if you’re planning to attend? Register now! Don’t forget to tweet us, like us on Facebook, share pics with us on Instagram and use the hashtag #PaceBound!

Seidenberg students fight poverty at Google hackathon

On October 8, 2015, a team of Seidenberg students descended on Google HQ for a day of impromptu coding. The event was for a good cause: Techo, a non-profit organization that seeks to overcome poverty in slums, needed some help building an app that would make gathering information about families living in slums easier.

Techo is present in 22 countries in Latin America and works in over 670 slums every single week. It has implemented 450 community working groups thanks to the help of over 80,000 volunteers (with 800,000 volunteers having been involved to date). The organization has built over 105,000 transitional houses and 6,000 permanent houses, which can massively impact the lives of people living in slums. As if all that wasn’t enough, Techo seeks to empower families through education and community-building: 17,000 adults graduated in basic skills training programs and 26,000 children participated in educational programs thanks to Techo.

Google hosted the event, and representatives from Techo and the television network Univision were there to steer (and record) the hackathon. Pace people present included Jigar Mehta, Dhruvil Gandhi, Virali Jhaveri, Robert Plumly, Vaibhav Dubey, Ethan Garrison, Hana Stanojkovic, Barak Michaely, Eiman Ahmen, Ava Posner, Hardik Patel, Jan Schoepp, Trong Le, Ritesh Pathak, and Preston Rollins.

The problem to solve was as follows: Techo workers collect information about the needs and conditions of the families they help by asking a series of questions. The answers are recorded by hand, and are entered into a database and organized so Techo can establish an action plan. However, due to the strict organization of the questions against the conversational speech style of the interviewees, this method is highly inefficient and keeps Techo from spending more time actually doing the good work.

Seidenberg students were on hand to help fix this problem.

Techo already has an app that contains the questions, but it needed improvement in order to be efficient. The Seidenberg team split into three groups – one working on the front end, one on the database, and one on the form containing questions itself. Due to the nature of the hackathon, the team only had around 6 hours to work on the project – but they succeeded in improving opening the app, cutting out unnecessary questions and making the usability simpler.

It could be up to Seidenberg Creative Labs to finish the job!

Learn more about Techo and donate!

Alumnus Doug Kandl talks cybersecurity at Seidenberg

Seidenberg alumnus Doug Kandl visited the Seidenberg School at both Pace campuses this week. To audiences at Pleasantville and NYC, Doug gave presentations on his work with the US Army, the MTA, and more – with a focus on cybersecurity. He spoke about the state of the Department of Defense’s use of technology and where it hopes to be in the future.

Doug works in the Cyber Center of Excellence, with the responsibility of training the signal force and the cyber force, as well as working on future developments that allow soldiers to do the best job with the best technologies.

He also spoke about the opportunities available to Seidenberg students, who can apply for scholarships that will allow their tuition to be paid for by the US Government, along with a stipend. Those interested can also check out USAJOBS.gov for internship opportunities. The US Army has several partnerships with Pace – Research and Development, Development of Courseware, and Internships.

After speaking about his job specifically, Doug moved on to discussing general trends in cybersecurity, such as innovative ways cyber criminals are hacking into systems. One such path was through supply chain infiltration, so instead of attacking an organization directly, hackers will infiltrate somewhere along the supply chain in order to get into the system more covertly.

Doug’s presentations were very informative and we are delighted to have had him return to Pace to be our cybersecurity expert in residence!

Douglas Kandl ’14 holds a bachelor’s in Information Technology, a master’s in Information Systems, and was a scholar in the Department of Defense Information Assurance Program. During his time at Pace’s Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, Doug gained several excellent internships, including working for Standard & Poor’s and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. On arrival at Pace in 2010, Doug immediately began work on revitalizing Pace’s struggling Jewish student organization, Hillel, with great success. Thanks to his many academic achievements, Doug currently works at the Department of Defense, where he applies and expands his expertise in cybersecurity on a daily basis.