"Social Cybersecurity"
with Sauvik Das
 

RSVP

Entering an era of pervasive, connected smart things, our cybersecurity decisions increasingly interfere with our social lives. Yet, little is known of the complex social consequences of our security behaviors, and vice versa. Absent this knowledge, it is difficult to develop better, more socially intelligent security systems that are intuitive for the layperson. My work on social cybersecurity bridges this gap. First, I will highlight some data science work on how social factors affect security behaviors through two empirical analyses: (i) an exploratory analysis of how optional-use security tools diffused through the social networks of 1.5 million Facebook users and (ii) a randomized, controlled experiment with 50,000 people. I will then discuss Thumprint, an inclusive authentication system I created based on the results of the prior empirical analyses. Using techniques from both supervised and unsupervised machine learning, Thumprint authenticates and identifies individual members of small, local groups (e.g., families or small work teams) through the acoustic and acceleration profiles of a single, shared secret knock. Taken together, my work points towards a future of socially intelligent security systems that understand and accommodate basic human behaviors, desires, and capabilities.

Sauvik Das is an assistant professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research, which intersects human computer interaction (HCI), data science, and cybersecurity, aims to empower people with novel security systems that mitigate costs of time, effort, and social capital. His work has won multiple Best Paper and Best Paper Honorable Mention awards at leading, peer-reviewed academic conferences for HCI (UbiComp, CHI), as well as an Honorable Mention for the National Security Agency’s "Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Award" in 2014. His work has also been widely covered by the press, including the Financial Times, Slate, ArsTechnica and The Atlantic. He is an National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow, a Qualcomm Innovation Fellow, a Stu Card Graduate Fellow, and an National Science Foundation EAPSI Fellow. Das earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University and his B.S. in Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The Cybersecurity Lecture Series at Georgia Tech is a free, one-hour lecture from a thought leader who is advancing the field of information security and privacy. Invited speakers include executives and researchers from Fortune 500 companies, federal intelligence agencies, start-ups and incubators, as well as Georgia Tech faculty and students presenting their research. Lectures are open to all -- students, faculty, industry, government, or simply the curious.