CoEIA and KSU Shine at the International Conference on Big Data and Security

The International Conference on Big Data and Security was sponsored and supported by Nanjing Institute of Technology (China), University of Oulu (Finland), Curtin University (Australia), University of Central Arkansas (USA), Kyunghee University (Korea), NUAA (China), the Jiangsu Association of Artificial Intelligence, the Jiangsu Computer Society and several local and foreign companies. It brought together experts, academics, professionals and researchers from around the world to discuss the security and privacy of big data and systems, as well as AI, machine and deep learning, blockchain and 5G.

The opening ceremony was presided over by the honorary chair and president of Nanjing Institute of Technology, who welcomed the guests and underscored the importance of cybersecurity and big data in the modern digital world. It was attended by officials, media, academics, professionals and researchers.

Prof. Muhammad Khurram Khan, distinguished professor of cybersecurity at the Center of Excellence in Information Assurance (CoEIA), King Saud University, was invited to deliver a keynote titled "Cybersecurity in 5G-Enabled Vulnerable IoT World". He explained that the large-scale proliferation of the Internet of Things is transforming the way we work, live, communicate and do business, and that 5G is set to serve as the backbone of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).

"The unprecedented dependence and hyper-connectivity of billions of IoT devices could lead to unexpected cybersecurity risks and threats. 5G uses cloud-based services, network function virtualization, software-defined networks, IoT and IIoT, and edge and fog computing; more users and more devices mean more vulnerabilities, cyberattacks and cybercrimes," he said. He presented his research outcomes at CoEIA to address these challenges and future research directions, and was interviewed by local media on global cybersecurity issues.

Other keynote speakers included Prof. Çetin Kaya Koç, IEEE Fellow (University of California Santa Barbara), Prof. Yang Xiao, IEEE Fellow (University of Alabama), Prof. Yi Pan (Georgia State University), Prof. V. Potdar (Curtin University), Prof. H. Khattak (Zayed University) and Prof. Zhaoqing Pan (NUIST). Participants commended Dr. Tian Yuan, organizing chair from Nanjing Institute of Technology, for a well-organized event.

In a matter of pride for KSU, the conference's best paper award was won by Dr. Najla Alnabhan, a faculty member at the College of Computer and Information Sciences (CCIS), King Saud University.