On Monday, 13.1.2025, 16:00, room M105 at Reykjavik University there will be an information meeting on the joint cybersecurity master's programme and cysec courses being offered at University of Iceland and Reykjavik University.
Reykjavik University, University of Iceland, and University of Akureyri and applied together for funding in order to establish a joint Cybersecurity research centre. The Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation announced that the thre universities will together get for the project Rannsóknarsetur um netöryggisfræði get 67.3 million ISK funding over 2 years from the university collaboration fund (Samstarf háskóla). This is a continuation of a established collaboration that created the M.Sc. cybersecurity specialisations/emphasis that received previously 2 years of funding.
However, we envisaged a significantly higher grant and with that, the idea was to use the grant to introduce a new Ph.D. program, co-funding two Ph.D. student positions, to hold community engagement activities, to organise a "Defend the Flag" contest, and to create undergraduate and M.Sc research opportunities. Now, with the lower funding, we need to adjust our vision for the Cybersecurity research centre.
The grant will also be used as co-funding for cybersecurity Digital Europe Programme projects that are funded by the EU, however only at a 50% funding rate, so that the ministry funding is needed to provide part of the co-funding.
As we will have soon a new government in Iceland, we can expect that the ministries will get re-organised and we have to see what this means for this funding.
Brynjólfur Stefánsson, Ásta Guðrún Helgadóttir, Martin Nizon-Deladoeuille, Helmut Neukirchen, Thomas Welsh: Understanding Trust in Authentication Methods for Icelandic Digital Public Services. IEEE SNAMS 2024: The 11th IEEE International Conference on Social Networks Analysis, Management and Security, IEEE, to appear 2024 or 2025. Preprint DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2501.17548
Martin Nizon-Deladoeuille, Brynjólfur Stefánsson, Helmut Neukirchen, Thomas Welsh. Towards Supporting Penetration Testing Education with Large Language Models: an Evaluation and Comparison. IEEE SNAMS 2024: The 11th IEEE International Conference on Social Networks Analysis, Management and Security, IEEE, to appear 2024 or 2025. Preprint DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2501.17539
The program lists only paper titles -- not authors nor presenters. Our student Brynjólfur Stefánsson presented both papers at the conference.
Has my user info (in the worst case: my password) been leaked? Look up who else owns your login data: https://haveibeenpwned.com
Note: if your data shows up there to have been leaked, then this is not your fault, but the fault of the website that was storing your data in an insecure manner and you should change your password at that website (also check whether the password has been leaked or only, e.g., your email adress). However, it is your fault if you use the same password for multiple websites: should your password leak from one website, criminals will try that password on other websites and will have success if you use the same password there. Use different passwords for different services. Even better: use multifactor authentication, i.e. not just a password (that can be easily leaked), but in addition something that can be less easily stolen, such as your phone: an authenticator app running on it, an SMS sent to your phone number, or the Icelandic digital ID on your SIM card.
An online quiz on how good you are at identifying phishing emails, i.e. emails trying to trick you into providing information, e.g. passwords: https://cybersecuritymonth.eu/quiz (Note: solutions not provided online -- you need to visit us to get hints where you were wrong and where you were right!)
A LEGO model of Iceland representing critical infrastructure that is subject to attacks. Each time, a service on our Internet-connected computer is attacked via the Internet from anywhere in the world, a light goes off. So when all Iceland turns dark in our Lego model, then you know that all of our services are currently being attacked at the same time. We use just a dummy sample server, but in fact, it could be your computer or a power plant that is attacked. True Blinkenlights - next time, we should do it using the lights in the glass front of Harpa concert hall.
A 3D scanner that scans the shape of your ear: used in CoE RAISE in order to find with AI out how the shape of your ear influences how you hear from different directions.
Quantum computing: a new piece to show, therefore no photos yet -- you really need to come and see!
On Friday, 27 September 2024, 10:45-12:15, we have in room SAGA - E (former Hotel Saga) a presentation (in Icelandic) on Cybersecurity at Menntakvika 2024, the University of Iceland education conference. See, the abstract titled "Net og gagnaöryggi í nútímasamfélagi" in the abstract collection. This is to raise cybersecurity awareness, see also the NCC-IS and ICEDEF projects.
On Tuesday 20.8.2023, 16:00, room Ada, in Gróska, 3rd floor, there will be an information meeting on the joint cybersecurity master's programme and cysec courses being offered at University of Iceland and Reykjavik University.
Deadline for applications is 15. April for the M.Sc. programme. If you missed that deadline: you can still apply for a related B.Sc. programme until 5. June and if you have the right qualifications (i.e. a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering) change from there into the M.Sc. programme.
Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering
Faculty of Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science
Deputy head of faculty (Autumn 2024-Spring 2026)
University of Iceland
Department of Computer Science
Gróska building, 3rd floor (stairway A or B), room 306
Bjargargata 1
102 Reykjavik
Iceland
E-Mail: helmut at hi. is
(Encrypted e-mail welcome: my public PGP key, also available at key servers -- X.509 based S/MIME encryption possible on request.)
