Securing cyberspace

COEUR d'ALENE — The way Jim Alves-Foss views cybersecurity is that any of the more than 2 billion Internet users can hack your computer system.

"This is a computer; sometimes people forget about that," the University of Idaho computer science professor told members of the Coeur d'Alene Rotary on Friday at The Coeur d'Alene Resort as he held up his cellphone. "I lock it, have virus protection and even log in.

"My neighbor doesn't lock his front door. I asked him that, 'If you had 2 billion people walking by, would you lock it?'"

The take-home message that Alves-Foss gives computer users concerned about hackers is: Stop, think, then connect.

"Ask yourself, 'Does this make sense?'" he said.

Alves-Foss said technology is changing so rapidly that cybersecurity measures can't keep up. Therefore, pausing about questionable inquiries and being vigilant, knowing that hackers are out there, is critical.

"This stuff comes out so fast, we don't know what we're doing and we have to be careful," he said.

Alves-Foss is helping launch UI's local Cybersecurity Training and Operations Center (CTOC) at the university's research park in Post Falls. CTOC will provide training for many local businesses such as Kootenai Health.

Alves-Foss said he has a fun job that can also be frustrating at times.

"I work with the Navy and Air Force (and other military branches) to protect systems, but I'm getting frustrated," he said. "We've known about security vulnerability for years. We've got a problem because we don't have a (computer science) educated workforce. (The University of Idaho) is doing our part to expand that, but it's not enough."

Alves-Foss and post-doctoral student Jia Song comprise a team from UI's Center for Secure and Dependable Systems (CSDS) that's in the midst of the Cyber Grand Challenge, a contest to increase cybersecurity in the United States.

The challenge, which is sponsored by the Pentagon, challenges hackers and computer scientists around the world to create an automated cybersecurity network that can detect and stop threats without human assistance.

The contest began with more than 100 teams a year ago, and the UI duo placed second out of 28 teams in a qualifying event in June. The CSDS team is one of seven teams that will compete in the final round in August 2016 in Las Vegas.

"We knew we had the potential to be successful after our software placed in the top five during two practice events hosted by DARPA (the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in December and April," Alves-Foss said. "Our competitors run supercomputers in the clouds, so we think we got a chance.

"I haven't had this much fun with my job in years, and my wife is getting tired of it."

The UI team is competing against the likes of University of California-Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University and a squad of engineers from the defense contractor giant Raytheon Co.

"We developed an innovative approach that allowed us to compete against much larger, better-funded and better-equipped teams fielded by some of the top cybersecurity researchers in the nation," Alves-Foss said.

As a finalist, the CSDS team received $750,000 to prepare for the final competition. The winner of the contest will receive $2 million; second place $1 million and third place $750,000.

Finalists are ranked based on performance, security and continued service availability of patched software as well as documenting security vulnerability.

UI owns the software created by scratch by Alves-Foss and Song. The university is in negotiations over what to do with it, Alves-Foss said.