IMPROVING SMART GRID SECURITY USING MERKLE TREES

Abstract—Presently nations worldwide are starting to convert their aging electrical power infrastructures into modern, dynamic power grids. Smart Grid offers much in the way of efficiencies and robustness to the electrical power grid, however its heavy reliance on communication networks will leave it more vulnerable to attack than present day grids. This paper looks at the threat to public key cryptography systems from a fully realized quantum computer and how this could impact the Smart Grid. We argue for the use of Merkle Trees in place of public key cryptography for authentication of devices in wireless mesh networks that are used in Smart Grid applications

Redescribing Health Privacy: The Importance of Health Policy

Current conversations about health information policy often tend to be based on three broad assumptions. First, many perceive a tension between regulation and innovation. We often hear that privacy regulations are keeping researchers, companies, and providers from aggregating the data they need to promote innovation. Second, aggregation of fragmented data is seen as a threat to its proper regulation, creating the risk of breaches and other misuse. Third, a prime directive for technicians and policymakers is to give patients ever more granular methods of control over data. This article questions and complicates those assumptions, which I deem (respectively) the Privacy Threat to Research, the Aggregation Threat to Privacy, and the Control Solution. This article is also intended to enrich our concepts of “fragmentation” and “integration” in health care. There is a good deal of sloganeering around “firewalls” and “vertical integration” as idealized implementations of “fragmentation” and “integration” (respective). The problem, though, is that terms like these (as well as “disruption”) are insufficiently normative to guide large-scale health system change. They describe, but they do not adequately prescribe. By examining those instances where: a) regulation promotes innovation, and b) increasing (some kinds of) availability of data actually enhances security, confidentiality, and privacy protections, this article attempts to give a richer account of the ethics of fragmentation and integration in the U.S. health care system. But, it also has a darker side, highlighting the inevitable conflicts of values created in a “reputation society” driven by stigmatizing social sorting systems. Personal data control may exacerbate social inequalities. Data aggregation may increase both our powers of research and our vulnerability to breach. The health data policymaking landscape of the next decade will feature a series of intractable conflicts between these important social values

Freedom to Hack

Swaths of personal and nonpersonal information collected online about internet users are increasingly being used in sophisticated ways to manipulate them based on that information. This represents a new trend in the exploitation of data, where instead of pursuing direct financial gain based on the face value of the data, actors are seeking to engage in data analytics using advanced artificial intelligence technologies that would allow them to more easily access individuals’ cognition and future behavior. Although in recent years the concept of online manipulation has received some academic and policy attention, the desirable relationship between the data-breach law and online manipulation is not yet well-appreciated. In other words, regulators and courts are yet to realize the power of existing legal mechanisms pertaining to data breaches in mitigating the harm of online manipulation. This Article provides an account of this relationship, by looking at online manipulation achieved through psychographic profiling. It submits that the volume, efficacy, and sophistication of present online manipulation techniques pose a considerable and immediate danger to autonomy, privacy, and democracy. Internet actors, political entities, and foreign adversaries fastidiously study the personality traits and vulnerabilities of potential voters and, increasingly, target each such voter with an individually tailored stream of information or misinformation with the intent of exploiting the weaknesses of these individuals. While new norms and regulations will have to be enacted at a certain point to address the problem of manipulation, data-breach law could provide a much-needed backdrop for the challenges presented by online manipulation, while alleviating the sense of lawlessness engulfing current misuses of personal and nonpersonal data. At the heart of this Article is the inquiry of data-breach law’s ability to recognize the full breadth of potential misuse of breached personal information, which today includes manipulation for political purposes. At present, data-breach jurisprudence does very little to recognize its evolving role in regulating misuses of personal information by unauthorized parties. It is a jurisprudence that is partially based on a narrow approach that seeks to remedy materialized harm in the context of identity theft or fraud. This approach contravenes the purpose of data-breach law – to protect individuals from the externalities of certain cyber risks by bridging informational asymmetries between corporations and consumers. This Article develops the theoretical connection between data-breach law and online manipulation, providing for a meaningful regulatory solution that is not currently used to its full extent

Freedom to Hack

Swaths of personal and nonpersonal information collected online about internet users are increasingly being used in sophisticated ways to manipulate them based on that information. This represents a new trend in the exploitation of data, where instead of pursuing direct financial gain based on the face value of the data, actors are seeking to engage in data analytics using advanced artificial intelligence technologies that would allow them to more easily access individuals’ cognition and future behavior. Although in recent years the concept of online manipulation has received some academic and policy attention, the desirable relationship between the data-breach law and online manipulation is not yet well-appreciated. In other words, regulators and courts are yet to realize the power of existing legal mechanisms pertaining to data breaches in mitigating the harm of online manipulation. This Article provides an account of this relationship, by looking at online manipulation achieved through psychographic profiling. It submits that the volume, efficacy, and sophistication of present online manipulation techniques pose a considerable and immediate danger to autonomy, privacy, and democracy. Internet actors, political entities, and foreign adversaries fastidiously study the personality traits and vulnerabilities of potential voters and, increasingly, target each such voter with an individually tailored stream of information or misinformation with the intent of exploiting the weaknesses of these individuals. While new norms and regulations will have to be enacted at a certain point to address the problem of manipulation, data-breach law could provide a much-needed backdrop for the challenges presented by online manipulation, while alleviating the sense of lawlessness engulfing current misuses of personal and nonpersonal data. At the heart of this Article is the inquiry of data-breach law’s ability to recognize the full breadth of potential misuse of breached personal information, which today includes manipulation for political purposes. At present, data-breach jurisprudence does very little to recognize its evolving role in regulating misuses of personal information by unauthorized parties. It is a jurisprudence that is partially based on a narrow approach that seeks to remedy materialized harm in the context of identity theft or fraud. This approach contravenes the purpose of data-breach law – to protect individuals from the externalities of certain cyber risks by bridging informational asymmetries between corporations and consumers. This Article develops the theoretical connection between data-breach law and online manipulation, providing for a meaningful regulatory solution that is not currently used to its full extent

Who\u27s In and Who\u27s Out?: What\u27s Important in the Cyber World?

The aim of this paper is to offer an introduction to the exploding field of cybersecurity by asking what are the most important concepts or topics that a new member of the field of cybersecurity should know. This paper explores this question from three perspectives: from the realm of business and how the cyber world is intertwined with modern commerce, including common weaknesses and recommendations, from the academic arena examining how cybersecurity is taught and how it should be taught in a classroom or laboratory environment, and lastly, from the author’s personal experience with the cyber world. Included information includes scholarly journals, news sources, special interest books, academic curricula, and relevant experience. By blending together information procured from these three distinct environments, this paper proposes a number of the most important concepts and lessons that one should know as they begin their career, whether professional or academic, in the cyber world