Saves the world by protecting it from cyber threats
October is the national cybersecurity month in Norway. Meet associate professor Oleksandr Kholosha from the Department of Informatics, who works to protect us from digital threats.
Main content
– How are you helping to save the world?
– It is no exaggeration to say that nowadays everyone has heard about cyberattacks, hackers, and cyber warfare. Just Google for ‘dataangrep’ in the news and you will mention that this kind of ‘bad’ news are coming with a surprising regularity. IT security problems are a big challenge for governments, businesses and social services. Moreover, I am quite sure that many of you faced some problems related to information security on the personal scale. I do not want to get anyone scared (just want to raise general awareness), but each of us is a constant target of a cyber threat.
Why is security becoming a big issue for all? This is a result of expanding the services offered electronically to each of us. Of course, it is convenient to get digital public services, do banking, communicate by email, etc., and be able to do all this using a compact device like telephone. We trust, basically insecure, devices with a lot of confidential, sensitive, personal data and this kind of data hackers are after.
A much more serious issue for today comes from the fact that our critical infrastructure is becoming increasingly digitized and, thus, more vulnerable. Such infrastructure provides services to a very large number of people that makes possible consequences and damage extremely critical, in case the normal operation is disrupted. Successful cyberattacks on critical infrastructure would impact public safety, security and health, or general economic stability. This brings up the need for robust and adequate security measures to protect it. Just think of communications, energy, water, emergency, banking, transport, healthcare, government services, etc. and imagine that some of these stops working or just work instable.
It is very important that we start realizing the information security risks as early as possible. Education in cybersecurity should start at school and we teach this course at the Institute to our 1st-year students. We conduct security research with the focus on applied tasks and collaboration with industrial partners to accumulate practical knowledge and spread it while teaching. We hope that combining education and research we can contribute to a more secure future society that is more resistant to complicated and evolving cyber threats.
If we contribute to making the world more secure with all the information technologies in use, then what is this if not ‘saving the world’!
– What inspired you to work in your field?
– From the beginning, my career at UiB was in the field of theoretical cryptography where I used a lot of mathematical tools. This is an extremely fascinating research area but over time, I observed that the neighboring area of IT security was rapidly developing, and the demand for knowledge and specialists was great. The use of my previous experience to solve new problems was inspiring and challenging at the same time. I had to learn a lot before I was able to teach others. But learning IT security never stops for me, since this is a fast-evolving area of technology where you really must follow.
We have built a solid research background in reliable and secure communications at the Selmer Senter. It looks natural and promising to expand in the direction of IT security. It is a great feeling to work on a topic that is closely related to modern IT technology and solves everyday problems that affect everyone.
I see a big interest in information security from IT staff, students and a wider community. It is a challenge to adjust the technical complexity level when speaking about security to different audiences. It gives a big satisfaction and inspiration for future work when I succeed in making the topic interesting for everyone.
– How do you save the world at home?
– Cybersecurity is an exciting topic that keeps my mind busy all the time. At home, I am trying to limit the time my kids spend on computer games by using filtering, passwords, parent control, etc. But this is a constant race with my son who regularly cracks passwords, PINs, bypasses parent control and plays the hacker with me. I believe this is also a part of security awareness training for the young (of course, not to become a hacker in the future but to learn something about IT security from the early years). Popular topics like secure password use are interesting for all my family members.
