Cybersecurity provides a practical introduction to securing information in an increasingly connected world. Over four weeks, participants explore the principles and tools for protecting communication, systems, and data—from the foundations of cryptography and network security to real-world threats, vulnerabilities, and defenses. The course balances theory with applied practice, giving students the knowledge and skills to evaluate risks, implement safeguards, and understand the broader implications of digital security.
TBC — 9:00–10:30A EDT
Mon, Wed, Fri (local)
Local nodes set times
Radia designed the spanning tree algorithm that transformed Ethernet from the original limited-scalability, single-wire CSMA/CD, into a protocol that can handle large clouds. Later, she improved on spanning tree-based Ethernet by designing TRILL (TRansparent Interconnection of Lots of Links), which allows Ethernet to make optimal use of bandwidth. Her textbook Interconnections made a science out of the murky field of network protocols.
Dell / EMC
Charlie Kaufman, a security architect for the Midrange Storage Business Unit at Dell/EMC, works on securing the current and future generations of midrange storage arrays. He has been involved with computer networking, cryptography, and security for over 25 years, and holds over 50 patents in those fields. He has contributed to a number of IETF standards efforts including IPsec, S/MIME, and DNSsec and served as a member of the Internet Architecture Board. He is co-author of the popular textbook Network Security: Private Communication in a Public World. It was in the course of working on the third edition that he learned about quantum computing.
Staff Software Engineer at Google
Dr. Droms is a Staff Software Engineer at Google, where he is on the GCP Interconnect team working on hybrid cloud computing. Prior to joining Google, he was a Distinguished Engineer at Cisco, participating in a research project into the application of ICN to IoT and video delivery. He organized the IETF working group that designed DHCP in 1989 and has been active in the IETF in several roles ever since. He is an author of more than 20 RFCs, including many of the core DHCP specifications. Dr. Droms chaired the dhc WG until 2009, when he was selected to be an Internet Area Director in the IESG. In 2015, Dr. Droms was named a member of the IAB.
Senior Staff Member MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Dr. Hamed Okhravi is a Senior Staff member at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where he leads programs and conducts research in the area of systems security. His research interests include systems security, science of security, security evaluation, and operating systems. He is the recipient of the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer (2024), two Best Paper Awards (NDSS'22 and RTSS'21), three R&D 100 Awards (2022, 2020, and 2018), Best Reviewer Award (CCS'21), Stratus Award for Cloud Computing (2020), MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Best Invention Award (2019), Team Award (2015), National Security Agency's Annual Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Award (2015), and MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Early Career Technical Achievement Award (2014) for his work in computer security.
Technical University Berlin
Vincent is a Phd Student at the Security in Telecommunications Department of Technical University Berlin. Prior to his Phd, He worked as a security researcher at Security Research Labs, a Berlin based security consultancy. His interests cover a wide range of IT-Security fields, especially systems- and telecommunication security, and applied cryptography. He presented his research at various academic and industry IT-Security conferences, including Blackhat USA. He is always eager to learn about IT-Security from institutions from all over the world, including an exchange semester at ETH Zurich, and, most recently by conducting system security research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a visiting researcher to Mengjia Yan’s group, working on micro-architectural security.
Assistant Professor, MIT EECS
Mengjia is an assistant professor at MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Her research interest lies in the areas of computer architecture and security, with a focus on side channel attacks and defenses. Her group works on exploiting new micro-architectural vulnerabilities and designing comprehensive and efficient defense mechanisms.
Before joining MIT, She earned a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where she worked with Professor Josep Torrellas. She also received a B.S. degree in Computer Science from Zhejiang University, China.
Assistant Professor Cybersecurity & Privacy Georgia Tech
Dr. Michael A. Specter is an assistant professor at Georgia Tech, and a senior research scientist at Google. His research focuses on systems security and applied cryptography, particularly in areas relevant to public policy. Topics that interest him include surveillance, cryptographic accountability, content moderation, misinformation, and elections security.
He has a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, where he was advised by Gerry Sussman and Danny Weitzner. He holds a research award from the Elections Verification Network, and a Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Vice President of Threat Intelligence
Etay Maor is the vice president of threat intelligence at Cato Networks, a founding member of Cato CTRL, and an industry-recognized cybersecurity researcher. Prior to joining Cato in 2021, Etay was the chief security officer for IntSights (acquired by Rapid7), where he led strategic cybersecurity research and security services. Etay has also held senior security positions at Trusteer (acquired by IBM), where he created and led breach response training and security research, and RSA Security’s Cyber Threats Research Labs, where he managed malware research and intelligence teams.
Etay is an adjunct professor at Boston College and is part of the Call for Paper (CFP) committees for the RSA Conference and Qubits Conference. Etay holds a Master’s degree in Counterterrorism and Cyber-Terrorism and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from IDC Herzliya.
Senior Lecturer, Information Technology, MIT Sloan
Keri Pearlson is a Senior Lecturer and a Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School. She previously served as the Executive Director of the CAMS (Cybersecurity At MIT Sloan) research consortium.
Pearlson has held positions in academia and industry including Babson College, The University of Texas at Austin, Gartner’s Research Board, CSC, and AT&T. She founded KP Partners, a CIO advisory services firm and the IT Leaders’ Forum, a community of next generation IT executives. She was the founding director of the Analytics Leadership Consortium at the International Institute of Analytics. Pearlson began her career at Hughes Aircraft Company as a systems analyst.