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Cybersecurity BS

Rochester Beacon talks to Steve Hoover, executive director of RIT's new Global Cybersecurity Institute, to open in 2020.

Cybercrime is costing the world trillions of dollars, and analysts say that there aren’t enough qualified professionals to prevent those attacks. To address this problem, RIT is creating the Global Cybersecurity Institute (GCI), aimed at meeting the demand for computing security and artificial intelligence professionals, while developing future technologies, protocols and human understanding needed to address the global cybersecurity crisis.

A team of RIT students from different computing disciplines came together last semester to place third in the 2019 MITRE Collegiate eCTF (embedded capture-the-flag) cybersecurity competition.

The main topic of conversation during Scott Brink’s co-op interviews was almost always about cybersecurity competitions. Luckily, Brink has thousands of hours invested in hacking competitions from his time at RIT. Brink, a 2019 graduate of RIT’s computing security program, credits those cybersecurity competitions and student clubs with helping him succeed in the major.

This year’s Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation began Friday evening, with scores of university students letting their talent shine in front of an appreciative crowd during Dr. Munson’s Performing Arts Challenge. First place went to The Roar’s for a rousing rendition of “Feeling Good,” which the band patterned after a Michael Bublé performance of the song.

RIT’s cyber defense team took home third place at the 2019 National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, held April 23-25 in Orlando.

Recognizing that the internet is not always secure, millions of people are turning to the Tor anonymity system as a way to browse the World Wide Web more privately. However, Tor has been found to have its own vulnerabilities. This has a team of faculty and students from RIT’s Center for Cybersecurity researching the extent of the problem and ways to address it.

A team of computing security students will demonstrate how the unique properties that exist in the radio waves of a wireless device can allow a third-party to single out, fingerprint and track that specific Wi-Fi device during the Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival on Saturday.

Imagine RIT visitors will help keep the skies above RIT clear during the festival on April 27, in a new video game on display at the MAGIC Spell Studios building. Festivalgoers can play “Weather Defense: A Two Stories High Video Wall Game” on six large 4K displays, mounted two stories up the atrium wall of the new 52,000-square-foot MAGIC building.

When he was in high school, Josh Geise, a fifth-year computing security student, was involved in a program that donated refurbished computers to local families. To continue his work in computer refurbishment and help increase computer accessibility in the Rochester area, Geise and friend Brian Martens ’18 started their own nonprofit organization that donates refurbished computers to people in need.

A team of RIT cybersecurity students is heading to the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NCCDC) after taking first place at the regional competition March 15–17.

CyberScoop features Scott Brink, a fourth-year computing security student, for his work at IBM finding undisclosed vulnerabilities in the automated systems that companies use to check visitors into their facilities.