Zachary N J Peterson

NICE K12 Cybersecurity Education Conference

Tue, 08 Oct 2019 00:00:00 -0700

I will be speaking on Tuesday, December 10 at the 2019 NICE K12 Cybersecurity Conference.

I’ll be sharing some of my work in using alternate realities, in and out of the classroom, to engage new audiences in computer security concepts.

If you’re in the neighborhood, stop by and say hello!

On Stablecoins: Stability Mechanisms and Use Cases for Real People. In: Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Foundations and Applications of Blockchain, 2020

Wed, 01 May 2019 00:00:00 -0700

N. Fowler, E. Cuellar, Z. Peterson. On Stablecoins: Stability Mechanisms and Use Cases for Real People. In: Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Foundations and Applications of Blockchain, 2020.

In which I gave mediocre Cyber Monday advice

Mon, 26 Nov 2018 00:00:00 -0800

I had a fun opportunity to speak to Nathalie Vera of KCOY/KEYT news about Cyber Monday scams and what you can do to avoid them.

One of the things that may have gotten lost in my advice, however, is that it’s simply not enough for your browser to show a “closed lock” icon. At least one recent report shows that as many as a third of phishing sites are now using HTTPS/TLS (the technologies that make the locked in your browser “closed.”). This means, in addition to the “closed locked,” we must also check that the domain name/URL (e.g. amazon.com) shown by your browser matches the site you intended to visit. Only then can you know that your information is both being kept confidential (lock is closed) and being sent to the intended recipient (name matches). A small, but important distinction!

Fakesbook: A social networking platform for teaching security and privacy concepts to secondary school students. In: Proceedings of the ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education (SIGCSE), 2019

Wed, 10 Oct 2018 00:00:00 -0700

M. Zinkus, O. Curry, M. Moore, Z. Peterson, Z. J. Wood. Fakesbook: A social networking platform for teaching security and privacy concepts to secondary school students. In: Proceedings of the ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education (SIGCSE), 2019.

Cybersecurity Policy Fellow at New America

Wed, 03 Oct 2018 00:00:00 -0700

I’m very pleased and proud to announce that I’ve been named, among a distinguished list of scholars, a Cybersecurity Policy Fellow at New America. Details of the fellowship can be found in this press release.

I couldn’t be more excited for this opportunity. In particular, I’m looking forward to crafting policy that builds our nation’s cybersecurity workforce, leveraging much of the work I’ve done in computer security outreach and education over the years.

Cal Poly wins NSA GenCyber Teacher Training Award

Fri, 06 Jul 2018 00:00:00 -0700

My colleagues John Oliver, Paul Hummel, and I have been awarded a 2018 GenCyber grant for providing guidance to local high school teachers in integrating core, cybersecurity concepts into their classroms. The goal is to create a force-multiplier for generating interest in cybersecurity amongst the local high school students. Beyond traiditional in-class exercises, our program will leverage my existing cybersecurity track within EPIC to create a hands-on, learn-by-doing labratory where teachers will get to pracitce some of their newly learned techniques. Further, to help ensure that teachers will adopt the cyber labs as part of their teaching, we will link each of the labs to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) which are used by all California public schools. We hope to release our curricular materials publicaly soon after the camp concludes.

Authenticity, Ethicality, and Motivation: A Formal Evaluation of a 10-week Computer Security Alternate Reality Game for CS Undergraduates. In: Proceedings of the USENIX Advances in Security Education Workshop (ASE), 2018.

Tue, 03 Jul 2018 00:00:00 -0700

J. R. Morelock and Z. Peterson Authenticity, Ethicality, and Motivation: A Formal Evaluation of a 10-week Computer Security Alternate Reality Game for CS Undergraduates In: Proceedings of the USENIX Advances in Security Education Workshop (ASE), 2018.

CENIC Panel Cybersecurity Workforce Development in R&E Environments

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 00:00:00 -0800

Along with my colleagues Matt Bishop (UC Davis), Cynthia Irvine (Naval Postgraduate School), David Rusting (University of California CISO) and modertated by Sean Piesert (UC Davis), I partipated in a panel discussion titled Cybersecurity Workforce Development in R&E Environments at the CENIC Annual Conference.

I found it to be a really fascinating, with some key insights being:

We’re too narrowly focused on producing experts, when all computing majors (at a minimum) should be receive security education;
Even when producing attempt to produce “experts,” the traditional CS curriculum fails to attract and retain a diverse population of students;
There is no common core for computer security; instead there are wide, and sometimes conflicting, sets of learning objectives;
and, we have a long way to go!

Mixed approaches to CS0: Exploring topic and pedagogy variance after six years of CS0. In: Proceedings of the ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education (SIGCSE), 2018.

Tue, 09 Jan 2018 00:00:00 -0800

Z. J. Wood, J. Clements, Z. Peterson, D. Janzen, H. Smith, M. Haungs, J. Workman, J. Bellardo, and B DeBruhl. Mixed approaches to CS0: Exploring topic and pedagogy variance after six years of CS0. In: Proceedings of the ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education (SIGCSE), 2018.

Introducing Privacy to Undergraduate Computing Students. In: Proceedings of the Consortium for Computing in the Colleges Southwest Region Conference, 2018

Tue, 09 Jan 2018 00:00:00 -0800

M. Moore, M. Zinkus, N. Lemay, Z. Peterson, and B. DeBruhl. Introducing Privacy to Undergraduate Computing Students. In: Proceedings of the Consortium for Computing in the Colleges Southwest Region Conference, 2018.