As hackers become more sophisticated, so does research in cyber security, cryptography. 

As people become increasingly dependent on digital technology, security and privacy concerns will be growing issues for the next several decades, says Amit Sahai, the associate director of the Center for Information and Computation Security (CICS) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

UCLA professor Jens Palsberg predicts that 2009 will see an increasing number of headline stories on cyberterrorism, against both countries and multinational organizations. “More and more, people will wonder whether the increasing computerization of healthcare will make their most personal data be one cyberattack away from falling into the wrong hands,” Palsberg says. “Pundits will call for the Obama administration to prepare the nation better for cyberattacks.”

Sahai notes that there have been some revolutionary breakthroughs in cybersecurity research in the past decade. CICS is developing new protective technologies, including functional encryption, biomedic-based encryptions, and reliable routing of the Internet. Sahai says functional encryption involves a sophisticated system in which multiple keys provide access to specific data.

Artificial intelligence (AI), particularly machine learning, could potentially offer more secure systems that learn to automatically recognize patterns and objects, Sahai says. “In AI, traditionally these programs are usually trying to understand handwriting, or speech, or see objects like people or facial expressions,” he says. “But in cybersecurity, some of the same ideas and algorithms can be used to identify viruses or spyware.”

Source: The Daily Bruin

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