Illinois State University recently hosted the Central Illinois High School Cyber Defense Competition. The competition is modeled on the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. Teams from central Illinois high schools competed against each other on their ability to defend their computers and networks against hacking attacks from a “red team” consisting of School of Information Technology students majoring in Information Assurance & Security. Teams are scored on their ability to keep critical programs and services running and their ability to protect them from attacks.

The competition was organized byDr. Douglas Twitchell and Dr. Glen Sagers of the School of Information Technology and  funded by the National Security Agency.

Read about local participants here.

Dr. Doug Twitchell, Associate Proffessor in the School of Information Technology, was interviewed and quoted by The Pantagraph in an article on the increasing popularity of banking by smartphone and the related information security issues.

“With mobile applications, I don’t think there’s too much problem right now because the attackers who want  to steal information haven’t zeroed in on mobile devices,” said Twitchell. But  he said it is always a battle to stay ahead of hackers trying to gain secure  information, and that it could become a problem when use of mobile banking  becomes prevalent.

Read the complete article.

Kyoungwon Suh, assistant professor in the School of Information Technology is among those President Al Bowman has appointed to a 25-member Task Force to review the University’s strategic plan, Educating Illinois 2008-2014: Priorities for Illinois’ First Public University.

Sheri Noren Everts, vice president for Academic Affairs and Provost, and Dan Layzell, vice president for Finance and Planning, will serve as co-chairs of the Task Force. Educating Illinois 2008-2014 was endorsed by the Illinois State University Board of Trustees and each of the shared governance constituencies in spring 2008.

“Illinois State has proven success in attracting and retaining highly talented students and it is critical that the University builds upon this success in the next revision of Educating Illinois…..,” Provost Everts stated.

Read more here

Dr. Amy Chou, Assistant Professor in the School of Information Technology, co-authored Course Management Systems and Blended Learning: An Innovative Learning Approach, which was published in Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, Vol. 9. Read the article.

Dr. Glen Sagers, assistant professor in the School of Information Technology, has conducted extensive research in the area of residential wireless network security. His research shows that only 56% of residential wireless networks employ some type of security to prevent unauthorized and/or malicious access. However, many of those residential wireless networks that do employ security are employing obsolete measures that are not effective against current attacks.

Who are these attackers? Why do you care if they access your wireless network? How do you prevent them from accessing your wireless network? You can find the answers to all these questions by reading Dr. Sagers’ Home Wifi Security Tutorial

Dr. Billy Lim and Dr. Bryan Hosack of the School of Information Technology have been awarded a grant of $450.000.00 by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The objectives of the funded project are to increase student performance in introductory programming courses through the use of Serivce Oriented Architecture/Web Services (SOA/Web Services), as well as to increase faculty engagement through the use of SOA/Web Services as a method of exposing students to real world programming scenarios.

Listen to Dr. Lim and Dr. Hosack discuss the grant on WJBC Radio.

Dr. Mary Elaine Califf, Associate Professor & Associate Director of the School of Information Technology is among three College of Applied Science and Technology faculty selected  to participate in the University Leadership Initiative for 2011-2012. The  purpose of the Illinois State University Leadership Initiative is to provide  members of the ISU community with opportunities to develop and explore their  leadership potential. Read more….

Dr. Doug Twitchell and Dr. Glen Sagers of the School of Information Technology have been awarded a grant of $56,000.00 by the Department of Defense (DoD). The purpose of the grant is to fund the development of an infrastructure to host a Central Illinois High School Cyber Defense Competition and recruit potential students to the School of Information Technology. The resulting infrastructure will also make it possible for the School of Information Technology to virtualize Information Assurance & Security laboratories and share those resources with other institutions.

Dr. Amit Shesh, School of Information Technology, authored the article High Level Application Development for Non-Computer Science Majors Using Image Processing, which was published in Eurographics 2011 Education Papers.

Read the article here.

Dr. Tibor Gyires, School of Information Technology, was awarded the Hungarian Neumann Award by the John von Neumann Computer Society in Hungary.  Past recipients include Bill Gates and Andrew Grove (the founder and CEO of Intel). The award is presented to those eminent international or Hungarian-born computer scientists whose professional activities have contributed to the development of Hungarian information technology and its international recognition. 

Dr. Gyires’ research areas include traffic analysis of high-speed networks, simulation modeling of networks, and network capacity planning and performance prediction. He developed traffic engineering methods for the optimal allocation of network resources in high-speed networks and his results were applied in large enterprise networks.  He has published numerous articles in journals such as IEEE/ACM Transactions of Networking and Mathematical and Computer Modelling.  He has also published several papers in conference proceedings and book chapters.