UNB’s Ali Ghorbani is Gearing up for Cyberwar
Ali Ghorbani is a strong advocate for New Brunswick becoming known for work and research in cybersecurity.
As professor and dean of the faculty of computer science at the University of New Brunswick, Canadian Research Chair in Cybersecurity and director of the Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity, Ghorbani has worked hard to establish UNB and the province overall as leaders in the field. He says that UNB is known worldwide for the research done there, but that the province needs to move quickly if we want to stay ahead of the curve.
Ghorbani first got into cybersecurity when he realized nearly any technological field he was involved in, from voice recognition to machine learning and data mining, has applications in the security domain. He says cybersecurity has only become more important as technology continues to play a bigger role in our lives.
“We have started cyberspace, mainly with the internet, and use it as a medium of communication, the summation of knowledge and information gathering and we’ve quickly realized that all these activities are bound to be abused by bad guys,” he said. “For a number of years, most industry leaders and government officials who were in charge of the networking and IT did not want to see this as a problem that affects everyone.”
Ghorbani said that what opened the eyes of these leaders and government officials were major attacks that affected everyone, from large companies to individuals.
“This is no more an IT problem than everyone else’s problem. It’s a human problem. Human beings are the weakest link now,” he said. “The IT community also realized that in order to build a solution that is applicable and is effective, they need the expertise of all domains, all skills, not just from the IT people. They need people from psychology, sociology, humanities, law, business, education, engineering, they all have to come in and work together to build a solution that is viable enough and takes into account all aspects of the security problem.”
Because of this, Ghorbani says governments and policy makers have begun to pay more attention to cybersecurity and make it more of a priority, but that there is still much work to be done. Ghorbani believes that a lack of awareness from the public and an unwillingness to provide cybersecurity research institutions with enough resources to make real progress is part of what’s holding the province and its economy back.
“We all think that it’s not going to happen to us … that leads to the ignorance,” he said. “When you have that line of thought, you ignore the enormity of the problem. The other aspect is a lack of training and knowledge and awareness. A good portion of society going into cyberspace doesn’t have enough knowledge of what can happen to them.”
“No matter how many times we tell them ‘don’t use your smartphone to connect to your bank account to do banking because it’s still not secure,’ many ignore it because it’s just a carelessness … I think that with the awareness and education and training and culture, we’ll definitely see that the next generation will be different because they grew up being on cyberspace. They understand it and they can deal with it versus other who feel estranged to cyberspace.”
Ghorbani has founded two startup companies, Sentrant and EyesOver, in his field and continues to be involved with them in a limited capacity after handing over the reins to former students. He says his main focus now is on risk analysis and risk management in cyberspace.
Along with graduate and postdoctoral students, Ghorbani is building a technology that allows for identifying the level of risk an individual will impose on a network or system. He says that the technology will assess the individual’s online behaviour and machine and will alert administrators if anything is found to be a threat. He hopes that work like this will be better supported resource-wise by government and industry.
“The work needs to be done by those who have expertise and industries who actually will drive the entrepreneurship or economic development,” he said. “I think we are on the right track but one thing I’m a bit concerned about is if we don’t move fast, this is not an area where we take our time and say ‘okay we’ll do it next year.’ We’ve got to be fast in order to stay ahead of the curve compared to others … Government definitely has to come forward with more resources and prioritize it and make decisions faster.”
Ghorbani says that with everything moving into cyberspace, cybersecurity training and jobs are a very safe bet.
“It’s going to be to an extent that if anyone has a couple years of training in cybersecurity, they’ll be secured for a job for 30 years … There’s no way I can imagine that this area in terms of research development, intellectual property, industry and bringing revenue to a region would die down. It’s just going to grow and grow. This province could actually define itself as a province that is known for generating intellectual property in the cybersecurity area.”