UMBC Cybersecurity Institute

UMBC Professor Naghmeh Karimi and her students in SECRETS Lab, along with their collaborators, won the Best Hardware Demo award at the 2026 IEEE International Symposium on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust. They demonstrated their research using PUFs ("physical unclonable functions") that leverage inherent microscopic manufacturing variations in a semiconductor to generate a unique, unforgeable digital fingerprint for a specific device. https://lnkd.in/enEcazH5

Dr. Josiah Dykstra talks on American Self-Defense in Cyberspace, 11am-12:30pm ET, Thur. March 12. He will describe cyber threats, roles and responsibilities, technology, and policy considerations for achieving American self-defense in cyber; discuss options for defending against cyberattacks, achieving deterrence, and the interplay between offense and defense; and consider perspectives from computer science and engineering, political science, and economics.
https://cybersecurity.umbc.edu/home/news/post/157310/

UMBC Prof. Sanorita Dey discusses her research on how adolescents handle online interactions that can gradually escalate into phishing attacks. While many can recognize obvious scams, they often struggle to explain why a message is manipulative, how tactics unfold over time, or what protective actions should follow. She'll cover the theoretical framing, experimental design, and implications for AI-mediated cybersecurity education. https://cybersecurity.umbc.edu/home/news/post/157134/

Enis Golaszewski and Neal Krawetz present their work on Verifying Provenance of Digital Media: Security Analysis of C2PA and its Implementation, 12–1 pm ET, Fri., Feb. 20, 2026, online via WebEx. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity standard combats misinformation by using cryptography to bind tamper-evident provenance data, such as authorship, origin, and edit history, to digital media files. Their investigation uncovered three major weaknesses and suggests ways to strengthen C2PA. https://cybersecurity.umbc.edu/home/news/post/156583/