My name is Aaaron Hansen,
a kind of a joke around the house is,
based on my background I get in a little bit here,
my kids my family never know what to call me
so they've kind of adopted a new term
called doctor lieutenant colonel.
[laughter in audience]
That's kind of developed because of
29 years in the Air Force,
going through enlisted commissioning,
attending a civilian institution to get a PhD,
and then doing a lot of research
within this cybersecurity realm
over the past few years
so it's been kind of interesting for me.
Dan Lloyd, the director of the TCP
has kind of allowed me or asked me to come in
and introduce some of our big hitters
that are gonna be comin' up next
that'll talk in more specifics about the research areas
but for me my experience within
the cybersecurity realm has been 20+ years.
and cybersecurity 20 years ago looked a lot different.
Especailly from a military background,
it was really an approach of,
we need to post a sentry or a guard at a key asset
or we may need to do random patrols around things
to physically look at and physically observe what's going on
and then over the years that has really evolved into
using technology and automation in our benefit
so this is kind of where the growth is happening
and where it continues to go.
So with my experience with the military,
the civic PhD,
currently working with the NSA Colorado,
the research areas specifically focused within
the critical infrastructure protection
and being a new adjunct faculty here
within the TCP program,
they asked me to come in and see if I could
introduce these big hitters.
So the program's been around for awhile, 20+ years,
it was newly minted or re-titled from
Interdisciplinary Telecommunication Program
to the Telecommunication or,
Technology, Cybersecurity, and Policy
and looking at the trifecta of those,
how those interact with each other
in kind of a holistic approach
to continue to research and get advances
within the various areas.
The core topics here, the big 4.
Network Communications, you'll hear about that
a little bit later from Levi and Kevin,
they'll bring that one home,
but I'm gonna focus a little bit more on the Cybersecurity,
but looking at like a traditional CIA model is what we,
what we knew when we think of Cybersecurity
but we're also bringing in some new approaches
in risk thinking, systems thinking,
as well as adversarial thinking.
What is the adversary going to do?
How do we understand our own systems?
And then understanding what someone may want to do to them
so that we can protect and harden those.
And coming at this from a standpoint of
how do we protect, detect, and then respond
to these critical systems.
So within this cyber--
within the cybersecurity realm,
there's really big, 4 big areas where TCP is doing research,
one of them being cybersecurity in vehicles.
Looking at the sheer volume of the ubiquitous networks,
everything from what you would know
as a tire pressure monitoring system
to how those connect and interact with the telematics,
with infotainment, with wifi,
and it just becomes a very broad landscape.
The second one being more cybersecurity in space.
So within the environment at CU,
building upon the strong network
in telecommunications foundation, research foundation,
space and aerospace seem to be a natural progression.
So we look forward to future opportunities there.
The third one being more cybersecurity
within military and defense
and we do have a lot of projects
and research areas happening
within the defense industry base
as well as within various agencies here local to us
within Colorado as well as outside the state.
And the last one being what you see up here,
is the internet of things or cyber-physical systems.
So what does a tron or what does an electron
or what does a bit or a byte do
and how does that have a physical effect
to some sort of operation
or some sort of process out in the field?
And then finally when we look at strategy and management,
looking at the risk assessment piece of that,
not only risk, but what is the gain loss?
What is the intel gain loss?
What is the operations gain loss?
What is the impact to production and to our bottom line?
So those are some of the big areas there,
or big 4 items as well as cybersecurity research areas.
When we look at this slide here,
please focus not just on the degrees offered,
but look at the numbers of the students.
So I kind of look at this as research opportunities.
Within this industry we're expected to see
1.8 million workforce shortage by 2022.
Within the state of Colorado itself,
we have approximately ten thousand unfilled
what you would call cybersecurity jobs.
So this is the TCP under the CU banners
piece and try to fix that or address those issues.
We also have in a lot of these netting salaries
that are three times the national average
so there's a lot of interests in this area.
The TCP is really interested
in the growth of the ecosystem itself.
So how can we pull together the students
in their various capacities within
technology, cybersecurity, and policy,
working together to influence the community,
influence the research that happens within the community
and the overall is to develop strong cyber leaders
but not just cyber leaders,
but cyber leaders in conjunction or with--
within collaboration of engineering experts.
So there are...
We do have a lot of strong partnerships
within military & defense already,
we're looking for new partnerships,
not looking for new partnerships for the sake
of just trying to get research dollars
and chase every single research project out there.
Doing so wouldn't really benefit the customer,
wouldn't really benefit the students.
Looking at some sort of focused niche.
Where can we apply the resources and our expertise
to further research?
We're not trying to compete with the big hitters
or other big hitters,
such as MIT or Carnegie-Mellon.
They've got their niches, were looking to come in
with the natural progression of what we see now
within networking telecommunications,
military defense, space,
and cyberspace, as well as aerospace.
So with that,
looking at the various research projects,
the achievement, the proven achievement that we have
as well as the talent management within us
and looking at an overall, you know,
how do we make sure that every time
we come to bat we hit a home run.
So with that, then,
I'm going to transition,
and introduce the next few speakers
that are the big home run hitters.
So I think Kevin Gifford is up next.
[applause]