Sandhya Aneja, Invisible Signatures: Device Fingerprinting in a Connected World

The field of cybersecurity is constantly evolving, and Device Fingerprinting (DFP) has emerged as a crucial technique for identifying network devices based on their unique traffic data.This is necessary to protect against sophisticated cyber-attacks. However,automating device classification is complex, as it involves a vast and diverse feature space derived from various network layers, such as application,transport, and physical. With the advances in machine learning and deep learning, DFP has become more accurate and adaptable, integrating multi-layered data and emphasizing the need to balance robust security measures. The study of DFP, especially in the context of emerging protocols like HTTP/2 and HTTP/3,remains a critical area of research in cybersecurity. This talk focuses on enhancing real-time threat detection while navigating the challenges of scalability. About the speaker: Dr. Sandhya Aneja is a researcher, inventor, and computer scientist with a strong passion for teaching. She is an Assistant Professor at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY,and was a Visiting Research Scholar at the Department of Computer Science, Purdue University. She has over 15 years of experience teaching computer science to undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Delhi and the University of Brunei.As a researcher, she contributed to developing a mobile application to facilitate the matching of interests on available mobile devices and allow exchanging of messages and files. The application allows broadcasting names and a limited number of keywords representing users' interests without any connection in a nearby region. The broadcasting region creates a mobile wireless network limited by the Wi-Fi region that is around 200 meters. She also received a US Patent on this technology.As a computer scientist, she has received project funding from the University of Delhi as PI and the Universityof Brunei as co-PI. She has extensively worked on Brunei government-funded projects with IBM Researchers. She is also a contributor to Sandia and DARPA-funded projects at Purdue University.