On April 11^th, Northeastern faculty, alumni, students, and veterans gathered for Cyber Day, part of Army Week Boston. Held at the Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering Complex (ISEC), the event was devoted to spreading the word about the U.S. Army’s cybersecurity mission.

“The goal of Cyber Day is to hold an event with the Army to show Northeastern’s expertise in cybersecurity and hear what challenges the Army faces,” says Jim Dinneen, director of industry partnerships at Northeastern’s Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute. Featuring both break-out talks and research displays, the all-day event was co-presented by the Institute, as well as Khoury College of Computer Sciences, the Army Cyber Institute at West Point, Northeastern’s Dolce Center for the Advancement of Veterans and Servicemembers (CAVS), and the George J. Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security.

In opening remarks, Andy McCarty, director of CAVS, said Northeastern’s “involvement with the military dates back to at least World War One.” McCarty highlighted the university’s history and service to the Armed Forces and the veterans it produces. He reminded the audience of Northeastern’s Veteran Memorial, which contains dog tags engraved with the “names of Northeastern alumni who laid down their lives in service to this country.”

Current and former Northeastern students promoted awareness of the military and possibilities for a civilian career. Mike Pasqua, an undergrad majoring in environmental science who is president of the Student Veterans Organization, aims to “spread the word about what the group does to serve the Northeastern veteran community.” Isaac Fernandez (BSCS ’18) represented the 780 Military Intelligence Brigade, the U.S.’s most innovative cyberspace operations force. Fernandez first became aware of “the 780,” as it is known, when as an undergrad he defended a network in a capture-the-flag cyber game. After he graduated, Fernandez was hired by the brigade as a civilian in the role of intelligence specialist.

At one of the many technological displays situated throughout the ISEC atrium, Captain Steven Whitham spoke about the significance of augmented reality (AR) goggles that can, for example, pinpoint hidden bombs for future missions. “I saw a fellow soldier’s leg blown off,” he explained, a tragedy that AR could prevent in the future.

In the session, “Tactical Application of Augmented Reality,” Lieutenant Colonel Brett Lindberg defined AR as “taking digital mediums and placing them spatially in the real world” and noted, “We live in a data-driven world.”  He was joined by Magy Seif El-Nasr, associate professor with an interdisciplinary appointment in the College of Arts, Media and Design and Khoury College, who discussed games as a research platform to study human behavior to help soldiers in the field through integrating context, action, and cognitive reasoning in a way not possible with previous tools.

Funding support from the Army through a subcontract with SoarTech allowed Seif El-Nasr’s team to deliver visualizations of game data from games developed under Army funding. She described how Stratmapper, one of these visualization tools, “integrates different data sets, identifying diverse set of strategies, allowing us to see how one person was able to go outside, get around the enemy, and then attack them.”

In the breakout session “Operating in a Degraded Environment,” Major Chuck Suslowicz focused on how global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) “can become degraded due to spoofing, when a hacker sends incorrect information but you think you’re getting correct info.” In the same session, Assistant Professor Aanjhan Ranganathan of Khoury College, whose expertise is wireless security, emphasized, “Everything is being hacked.” He gave an alarming spoofing example in which an aircraft’s landing system is compromised, resulting in a crash landing.

“Cyber Education and Talent Management,” focused on workforce development, closed the event. Led by Dr. David Luzzi, senior vice provost for research and vice president of Northeastern’s Innovation Campus at Burlington, the panel consisted of members of the military and civilians. A key message voiced by Colonel Andrew Hall, head of the Cyber Institute at West Point, was that while all members of his team are unique, “each person started in computer science.” He stressed, “The Army is actively looking to bring civilians into the workforce.”

Career civilian Adam Nucci, who is deputy director of cyber for the Army’s Headquarters Department, spoke of the “unbelievable amount of opportunities in the cyber field in the Army” for both civilians and military. Nucci’s remarks were amplified by Catherine Gill, managing director of the Align Program at Khoury College, who described the benefit of joining forces with the Army to create talent together. Gill observed that there are “many more jobs available in cybersecurity than there are applicants.”

Major General Garrett Yee encouraged STEM education and stressed “you can do things in the Army that you can’t do elsewhere.” He concluded the panel by asserting that “cyber is a national security issue” and asked the audience “to spread the word.”