Research Area

Privacy and security

The Internet can be a dangerous place where malicious software, denial of service, phishing, credit card theft, identity theft and other attacks threaten the wellbeing and productivity of many in society. Other electronic networks — including voice/data networks (such as cellphone and wireless ad hoc nets), text networks, and cloud environments — are not much better. The goal of privacy and security research is to create environments in which it is safe for people to work and play. Specific applications include e-commerce, e-business, online gaming, healthcare, and corporate and government networks.

This research area involves a number of different sub-disciplines, including mathematics, communications protocols, distributed systems, software development, specification and formal design, model checking and theorem proving, verification, validation and testing, and hardware/firmware design. It seeks to combine some of these sub-disciplines in ways that allow secure and private interaction over electronic and wireless networks.