2021 Cyber Security Day

Each year, the Institute for Cyber Security, in collaboration with IT Support Services, hosts Cyber Security Day. This daylong event features nationally recognized security experts as well as speakers from law enforcement, government, the security industry, and academia. Cyber Security Day is open to the public, community colleges, and neighboring universities.

The fourteenth annual Cyber Security Day was held Tuesday, October 26, 2021, in the HUB Ohio Room on the IUP main campus.

Information for the 2021 Event

The fourteenth annual Cyber Security Day featured presentations from Rita Doerr, Joe Harford, Balaji Palanisamy, and Dom Glavach, and a panel discussion with Jon Roumfort, Craig Pluchinsky, and Cody Toy. Topics included blockchains, cybersecurity tools, cyber war, cybersecurity careers, and many others. View the guest speaker and title abstract sections for more information. 

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Guest Speaker Biographical Information

Rita Doerr, Academic Outreach Lead, National Security Agency

Rita Doerr has been employed as a computer scientist with the National Security Agency for over 37 years. She is currently the academic outreach lead for the Cybersecurity Directorate’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center. Prior to her arrival in CSD, she was a cyber instructor within NSA’s National Cryptologic School’s College of Cyber. During this assignment, Doerr completed a three-year technical development program focusing on cybersecurity education and training, where she toured in NSA’s Red Team and Academic Engagement Offices. Her external tours included teaching at Archbishop Spalding High School and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s CSEE Graduate Program, and serving as a cyber consultant for the Maryland Air National Guard’s 175^th Cyberspace Operations Group.

Joe Harford, Founder and President, Reclamere, Inc.

Joe Harford was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia and is a first-generation college graduate. He received a bachelor of science degree from the Pennsylvania State University in 1989, a master’s degree in workforce education and development in 1995, and a PhD in workforce education and development in 2019. Joe has worked in hospitality, manufacturing, and most recently in the technology sector. He founded Reclamere in 2001, a cybersecurity firm located in Central Pennsylvania that has been operating for the past 20 years. He is actively involved in prison reform and community reentry. Joe holds leadership positions in numerous national organizations and volunteers to work with high school students. He is married to Karen, has three sons (Nathan, Matthew, and Michael), one granddaughter (Norah), and two dogs (Lacie and Remi).

Balaji Palanisamy, Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh

Balaji Palanisamy is an associate professor in the School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh. His research interests include data privacy, privacy-preserving system design, and scalable and privacy-conscious resource management for distributed systems, IoT infrastructures, edge, and cloud computing. At the University of Pittsburgh, he carries out research in the Laboratory of Research and Education on security assured information systems.  He is a recipient of an IBM Faculty Award in 2017 and is a co-recipient of the Best Paper Awards in various conferences, including IEEE BigDataCongress 2017, IEEE/ACM CCGrid 2015, and IEEE CLOUD 2012. He is currently an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, IEEE TDSC, and the IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, IEEE TSC journal.

Dom Glavach, Chief Security and Technology Officer, CyberSN

Dom Glavach is the chief security officer and chief security strategist at CyberSN. In this executive role, he is responsible for leading the company’s information security strategy, policy, IT operations, security engineering, security operations, data privacy, and cyber threat detection. Prior to CyberSN, Glavach spent 20 years working with Concurrent Technologies Corporation, where he served as the chief information security officer and research fellow. He played a critical role in the company’s cyber risk management, providing cyber technical leadership and subject matter expertise to commercial and government clients. Glavach is a CISSP, an active member of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association Cyber Committee, chairs a subcommittee on Vehicle and Embedded Systems Cyber Security, and mentors at cybersecurity meet-ups. He has presented on various security topics to a wide range of public and government audiences, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Security Agency.  

Jon Roumfort, CISSP, IUP Senior Security Analyst

Jonathan Roumfort is a senior security analyst in IT Services at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the chair of the IT Services Security Committee. Jonathan has been employed at IUP for over 22 years, where he has managed IT security, enterprise systems, and networking. He has served IUP as a senior security analyst for almost 19 years and is on IUP’s Institute for Cyber Security steering committee. Jonathan is a member of various security groups and has been an ISC² Certified Information Systems Security Professional since 2010.

Craig Pluchinsky, IUP Senior Security Analyst

Craig Pluchinsky is a senior security analyst in IT Services at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Craig began his employment at IUP 15 years ago as a systems analyst and has been a senior security analyst for the past 10 years. His primary duties at IUP include maintaining/developing the Shibboleth SAML Identity Provider, maintaining the Security Information and Event Management System (Elastic), network monitoring, threat monitoring, and responding to security events against IUP’s infrastructure. He also provides cybersecurity education to faculty, staff, and students at IUP. 

Cody Toy, IUP Senior Systems Analyst 

Cody Toy is a senior systems analyst in IT Services at IUP. Cody has held several positions throughout his 10-year career at IUP, including helpdesk operations, desktop and device support and administration, server and web services administration, and most recently network and security operations. These various responsibilities provide him with well-rounded experience in cybersecurity working with various types of users and across various areas of technology.

Titles and Abstracts

Rita Doerr, Academic Outreach Lead, National Security Agency

• Title: NSA, Cybersecurity and Rubik's Cube: Can You Solve the Puzzle?
• Abstract: This talk will acquaint participants with the role that the National Security Agency’s Cybersecurity Directorate plays in securing our nation's cyber infrastructures. The talk also introduces the NSA’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, one of the important NSA centers that harness the power of industry partnerships to prevent and eradicate foreign cyber threats to National Security Systems, the Department of Defense, and the Defense Industrial Base. Participants will get to know about the CSD Internship Program and the multiple job opportunities offered by the NSA and the intelligence community. The talk will challenge participants to solve an interesting Rubik’s cube puzzle to get a better understanding of how hashing algorithms work and how hashing can be used to enhance the security posture of our systems.

Joe Harford, Founder and President, Reclamere, Inc.

• Title: Developing an Entrepreneurial Mindset to Compete in the Cyber War
• Abstract: The cybersecurity landscape has a great deal to offer men and women who are willing to take on the challenge of developing their technical expertise. However, make no mistake employers expect MORE than simply a great GPA, the ability to hack a bank account, or shutdown a server. As an employer, we need you to think differently. We want you to think like an entrepreneur. There are no limits, challenges are opportunities, and your focus is on team success. Are you up for the challenge – we need you.

Balaji Palanisamy, Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh

• Title: Introduction to Blockchains and Timed Data Release using Blockchains

• Abstract: This talk will introduce key concepts and fundamentals behind the design of blockchains. We will introduce the notion of smart contracts and illustrate the working of a smart contract in Ethereum. This talk will also introduce our recent and ongoing work on developing timed data release mechanisms using smart contracts. Timed data release refers to protecting data until a prescribed release time and automatically releasing the data at the release time. Blockchain technologies provide significant support for the decentralized implementation of timed data release mechanisms through the use of smart contracts. We will discuss our efforts on developing attack resilient approaches using smart contracts for timed data release in Ethereum.

Dom Glavach, Chief Security and Technology Officer, CyberSN

• Title: High Value, Low-Cost Cybersecurity Tools from the Trenches
• Abstract: The attack and defense landscape is full of vendors, products, and solutions.   Companies have established a wide range of solutions protecting intellectual property, trade secrets, and privacy.   Cybersecurity professionals have a set of preferred tools for awareness, defending, attacking (testing), and responding leveraging company-provided cyber solutions and the open-source community.  Every cyber professional has a preferred set of tools and often these preferred tools were discovered or first used during critical cyber events.  This talk will provide an inside perspective on valuable open source cybersecurity tools to investigate and prepare for future use.  Tools for individuals, security operations teams, and security leadership with little impact on established budgets.

Panel Discussion: Jon Roumfort, IUP Senior Security Analyst, Craig Pluchinsky, IUP Senior Security Analyst, and Cody Toy, IUP Senior Systems Analyst

• Panel Title: Sample Careers in Cybersecurity
• Abstract: There are now many career choices when looking for employment in cybersecurity and more choices are on the horizon. Panelists will explain both the similarities and differences in working in areas such as compliance, identity, network administration, and forensics. Each will discuss the future of cybersecurity, aimed at attendees looking to join the profession.

More Information

For more information about Cyber Security Day at IUP, please contact Waleed Farag, Director, Institute for Cybersecurity, at farag@iup.edu, 724-357-7995.