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 The
Laboratory of Education and Research on Security Assured
Information Systems will welcome Fred Cohen, CEO of Fred
Cohen & Associates, a firm specializing in information
protection. Dr. Cohen, who was awarded his Masters’ Degree
in Information Sciences in 1981 by SIS, is also a Research
Professor at the University of New Haven and an adjunct
at the University of San Francisco. Dr. Cohen will
discuss “Making Better Information Security Decisions
by Identifying and Reducing Cognitive Errors and Providing
Expert Guidance.” This seminar will take
place on Friday, October 26 from 2:30 pm to 3:30 in Room
404 at SIS. There will be an opportunity to meet
the speaker at a coffee at 2:00 pm, also in Room 404.
Dr. Cohen will provide an overview of decision support
systems, cognitive error mechanisms, and related work
that has led to increased understanding of how human
cognitive errors lead to poor security-related decisions. He
will discuss how those errors might be reduced, resulting
in better security decisions. Through the use of a magic
trick, he will demonstrate how cognitive error mechanisms
lead people to make poor assumptions, draw wrong conclusions,
and ultimately make poor decisions. The basics of cognitive
error mechanisms will be explored, along with an overview
of classes of decision support systems, and the identification
of specific classes of decision support systems used
in information security. He will talk about simple security
decisions with examples from each class and a few experimental
demonstrations using the attendees as test subjects which
show the results of these experiments next to the results
of previous, better-controlled studies. Finally, some
higher-end decision support systems used in high valued
information security consulting and security engineering
will be examined.
Dr. Cohen is best known as the seminal researcher in
the field of computer viruses and virus defense techniques,
as well as the use of deception and cognitive methods
for information protection. He is an information
protection consultant, industry analyst, and the principal
investigator whose team defined the information assurance
problem as it relates to critical infrastructure protection.
He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with
an MS in Information Science in 1981 before earning his
Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 1986.
He has published more than 200 professional articles,
books, and book chapters and is a frequent invited speaker
at conferences. He teaches graduate courses in digital
forensics, information protection, and related fields
as a research professor at the University of New Haven
and as an adjunct professor at the University of San
Francisco. He is also the CEO of Fred Cohen & Associates. |
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