Defense of Global Cyberspace Subject of Sept. 10 Lecture at Pitt

PITTSBURGH-On Sept. 10, Thomas Longstaff, Johns Hopkins University senior advisor for science and technology, will present a free public lecture titled "Where the Wild Things Are: Analyzing Attack and Defense in Our Modern Global Cyberspace." The lecture, presented by the University of Pittsburgh's Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies and Indiana University of Pennsylvania's John P. Murtha Institute for Homeland Security, is scheduled to be held at 7 p.m. in the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium, 650 Schenley Dr., Oakland.

At the Applied Physics Laboratory's applied information science department within Johns Hopkins, Longstaff works with a variety of infocentric operations projects on behalf of the U.S. government-with a focus on information assurance, intelligence, and global information networks.

Previously, Longstaff was the deputy director for technology for the CERT Program at Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute. In his 15-year tenure at CERT, he helped create many of the projects and centers that enabled the program to become an internationally recognized network security organization. At CERT, he assisted the Department of Homeland Security in using response and vulnerability data to define and direct a research and operations program in the analysis and prediction of network security and cyber terrorism events.

Longstaff has published on such topics as malware analysis, information survivability, insider threat, intruder modeling, and intrusion detection. He maintains an active role in the information assurance community and regularly advises organizations on the future of network threat and information assurance. Also, in addition to his faculty position at Johns Hopkins, Longstaff is a fellow of the International Information Integrity Institute.

The lecture is part of the Ridgway Center's speaker series. The Ridgway Center is part of Pitt's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for International Studies.

For additional information, visit the Ridgway Center's Web site (www.ridgway.pitt.edu) or contact Beverly Brizzi at 412-624-7884 or brizzi@gspia.pitt.edu.

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8/18/09/tmw