Research Assistant: NSF Eager Grant
I am a research assistant on a multidisciplinary team on the National Science Foundation’s Eager project. I work with MIS majors, Criminology majors, and Computer Science majors to map out the behavior of cyber criminals along the cyber intrusion chain.
This research has two objectives: Develop an integrated Dynamic Routine Activities Theory (DRAT), which examines the continually changing interaction between offender, target, and guardian (OTG) along cyber-attack trajectories; and understand how variations in OTG impact dynamic adversarial attack trajectories. We research how these variations can be measured, modeled and simulated, and what they imply for DRAT. We also research how trajectories can be disrupted to impact adversaries, which is necessary to develop anticipatory cyber defense measures and ultimately contribute to a shift towards proactive cyber-security. This exploratory, multidisciplinary research marries the two disciplines of criminology and computer engineering to push the research frontier on proactive cyber-security. This combination will generate new criminological knowledge, mixed-method innovations, and theoretically-informed simulations that prepare defenders with preemptive knowledge and tools in facing sophisticated adversaries.