News

• MSIT Professor gives talk in Toronto
  Yan Chen gave an invited talk entitled "NetShield: Matching with a Large Vulnerability Signature Ruleset for High Performance Network Defense" at the University of Toronto Networking Seminar in October 2009.
• Alok Choudhary Named John G. Searle Professor
  Alok Choudhary, professor and chair of the electrical engineering and computer science department in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and professor of technology industry management in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, has been named a John G. Searle Professor.  Read more.
• McCormick Engineering Celebrating 100 Years
  Since its establishment in 1909, the McCormick School of Engineering has sought excellence in achieving its two parallel missions: to produce new knowledge and to engage and educate students. Learn more about McCormick’s 100-year history and the new initiatives moving the school into the future. Click here for details.
• MSIT graduate Jibran Ilyas ('09) spoke for Defcon Skytalks on Friday, July 31, 2009 at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas.
  Nicholas J. Percoco and Jibran Ilyas will present Malware Freak Show which will review the intricate details of three very interesting types of malware found during real-life forensics investigations. Ranging from simple to very complex, the malware discovered during these investigations are advanced portions of software written by very skilled developers.
  
  Trustwave's SpiderLabs has found that these skilled developers are shifting their attack vectors from broad attacks compromising as many targets as possible to targeted attacks against specific point-of-sale (POS) systems and specific environments. Despite the varying degrees of difficulty to implement the malware, the end result of each attack is the theft of confidential data leading to significant fraud and business loss for the organizations where it was found. These attack vectors are now categorized as cybercrime and the complexity in their propagation, control channels and data exporting properties will be discussed and demonstrated during the presentation.
  
  Jibran Ilyas will also present, Only the Ones Close to You Can Hurt You — How Computer Memory (RAM) Defies You, during DEFCON Skytalks. As a senior forensics investigator for Trustwave's SpiderLabs, Ilyas has seen first-hand a recent increase in memory attacks as hackers adapt their techniques to access more carefully protected data.
  
  Security controls, such as data encryption, are being widely adopted, causing attackers to shift their focus on extracting data from memory, which holds unencrypted data. Computer memory can enable attackers to potentially steal sensitive information from a target network and steal users' identity without much effort.
  
  With this technique, an attacker not only obtains the information keyed in at the victim computer, but also the information of the people with whom the victim interacts (e.g. a chat conversation can be recovered from the memory). Random Access Memory (RAM) dumps can also contain e-mails, contacts, browsed Web sites and other personally identifiable information. Ilyas will discuss the risks of unencrypted memory for businesses and regular users along with the available solutions.
  
  Link to Press Release: https://www.trustwave.com/pressReleases.php?n=SpdrDefcon
  Link to DEFCON Speaker Page: http://defcon.org/html/defcon-17/dc-17-speakers.html#Percoco
• MSIT Associate Director wins STAR Award.
  MSIT Associate Director, Trista Wdziekonski, was recently awarded the McCormick STAR Award for Spring Quarter. The McCormick STAR Leadership Award program provides a way to recognize individuals who demonstrate leadership and support of McCormick’s collaborative effort to achieve Excellence at All Levels. Congratulations to Trista on winning this award. See article.
• MSIT Professor is visiting professor in Hong Kong.
  Professor Michael Honig was recently the visiting Wei Lun professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
• MSIT Tribune is featured on McCormick Engineering web site.
  A recent MSIT Tribune was featured on the McCormick School of Engineering website. Kris Hackney of SPSS, Inc., presented the topic: The Predictive Enterprise: Chicago Executive Tells How to Elevate Organizations to a New Level. Read article here.
• MSIT Director Travels to China for Presentation.
  Dr. Abraham Haddad travelled to Chengdu, China to present a paper and participate in a panel discussion (as the only US participant) at Chinasoft: 2009 EU-China Information Society Summit Forum.
• MSIT graduate Glenn Allison ('08) Featured in March Issue of Network World.
  Glenn Allison, Manager of Network Services at Grainger, was recognized in the March 2009 issue of Network World.  Glenn's team was able to reduce costs while also improving availability of the network.   See more here or download the PDF.
  
  
• MSIT graduate Bob Gariano co-authors book.
  Alum Bob Gariano (Class of  2006) recently co-authored a book, "Fundamental Talent," with Victoria Fine. It discusses how recruiting and retaining motivated and talented people is a differentiator in building shareholder value.  For more information, click here. 
• MSIT graduate Kelly Koenig puts her expertise in quantum nanotechnology to use battling identity theft.
  MSIT graduate Kelly Koenig was featured in the Chicago Sun-Times' January 17, 2009 Business section. Click here to read article.
  
  
  
  
• Positioning Strategy Research Results from Marketing Professor Alex Chernev
  When designing products, companies often choose one of two positioning strategies. They can opt for a narrow, specialized positioning, whereby the product is presented as a master of one, characterized by a single feature. Alternatively, companies can choose a broad, all-in-one positioning, whereby the product is described as a jack of all trades, combining different attributes in an all-in-one solution. Which of these two positioning strategies works best? Click here for more.

• Alok Choudhary awarded a United States Patent
  Alok Choudhary and co-inventors Anshuman Nayak, Malay Haldar, Vikram Saxena, and Prithviraj Banerjee were awarded a United States Patent for "System for architecture and resource specification and methods to compile the specification onto hardware"  Details can be found at this link: <http://www.eecs.northwestern.edu/activities-accolades/#264>
• Read the latest edition of the MSIT newsletter to get more news, updates, and other information.

Events

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