Photo taken from the roof of ETH Zurich cafeteria
I manage EMC's global university research portfolio, and in that role I help pursue research engagements with faculty that specialize in areas such as cloud, big data, and trust.
Several weeks ago I stopped by ETH Zurich and met with the Department of Computer Science. My colleagues and I also met with faculty from the ZISC center:
The goal of the ZISC center is bringing together academia and industry to carry out research and education in information security.
I advise taking the train to ETH Zurich if you want to meet with the ZISC team, or perhaps take a taxi. I came to this conclusion after listening to ZISC researcher Srdjan Marinovic, who told me that his team has found a way to open a keyless car system by standing in the same room with the person who has the wireless key:
The details of their approach (Relay attacks on Passive Keyless Entry and Start Systems in Modern Cars) can be found in their paper on the subject. This project falls into the category of Access Control for Next Generation Systems, which is a project focus at the ZISC center.
While this type of research may freak out owners of new cars, the main focus of research at the ZISC center will actually freak out owners of digital information. I shared with the ZISC team some use cases regarding "digital passports", as well as multi-stage big data workflows. We had a discussion on several possible research directions, such as:
- How can a file travel to one country (and only that country)?
- How can globally distributed data scientists collaborate on remote data without the data leaving the country?
- How can multiple stages within a big data workflow provide overlapping access control for various data scientists at various stages?
In addition to ZISC center meetings, we had a long discussion about FutureICT. For those interested in Big Data research, I highly recommend learning about this proposal (which is currently nearing the grant stage).
This was my first trip to ETH Zurich and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes of it.
I plan on coming back. And I'll certainly take the train.
Steve
Twitter: @SteveTodd
