IEEE taps nationally recognized scientist to chair cybersecurity initiative

IEEE and the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI) announced that nationally recognized scientist and security expert Dr. Greg Shannon has been named chair of the IEEE Cybersecurity Initiative.

Shannon is chief scientist for the CERT Division at the SEI where he regularly partners with government, industry, and academia to develop advanced methods and technologies to counter sophisticated cyber threats. The SEI is a federally funded research and development center, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense and operated by Carnegie Mellon University, that helps organizations make measurable improvements in their software engineering capabilities by providing technical leadership to advance the practice of software engineering.
SEI's CERT Division is one of the world's leading trusted authorities dedicated to improving the security and resilience of computer systems and networks and a national asset in the field of cybersecurity, notes IEEE. (For more information, visit http://www.sei.cmu.edu and http://www.cert.org).

Dr. Shannon is a senior member of IEEE and has held a series of positions within the organization, most recently serving as general chair for the 35th IEEE Security & Privacy Symposium. According to a press release, prior to joining the SEI CERT Division, Shannon was the chief scientist at two startups working on scalable statistical anomaly detection, the science of cybersecurity, and insider threats. In earlier positions, he led applied research and development in cybersecurity and data analysis at Lucent Technologies, Lumeta, Ascend Communications, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Indiana University, and his own startup company. Shannon received a BS in computer science from Iowa State University with minors in mathematics, economics, and statistics. He earned his MS and PhD degrees in computer sciences at Purdue University on a fellowship from the Packard Foundation.

In his new role as chair of the IEEE Cybersecurity Initiative, the consortium says that Shannon will shape and lead a technical agenda that brings unique solutions to cybersecurity challenges by providing tools and data for computer security education, provides guidance on secure software coding and software assurance engineering, and facilitates adoption throughout the cybersecurity industry. “Many of the cybersecurity exploits that continue to make the daily news feeds come from avoidable engineering and operational mistakes that result in large-scale coordinated cyber attacks on netizens, critical infrastructures and nations,” comments Shannon.

He adds, “As networks continue to juggle exponential growth, new threats will emerge. Now is the time not only for better defensive measures, but also for cybersecurity standards and best practices that consider the entire technology lifecycle. With IEEE's ubiquitous impact on cyber technologies, I’m delighted to chair this initiative and harness IEEE’s experience, technical leadership, and resources to address society’s pervasive cybersecurity and privacy challenges.”

The IEEE Cybersecurity Initiative recently launched the Center for Secure Design, a cybersecurity initiative focused on the identification of software design flaws. The center’s report, entitled “Avoiding the Top 10 Software Security Design Flaws,” is based on real-world data collected and analyzed by experts at the world’s leading technology companies. Learn more at http://www.ieee.org.