The Cybersecurity Division at NCSA continues to grow! Over the past six months we have added three more members to our team. 

Ryan Walker is a Sr. Security Engineer who previously worked for both the University security and networking teams. He is interested in combining the seemingly disparate ideas of enabling connectivity and securing information. Ryan says he was an avid reader and traveler, though recently he spends much of his free time playing in his backyard with his family. (Editor's Note: We hope Ryan's travel plans open a bit more over the summer.) 

Jacob Gallion is a Security Engineer who returned to NCSA after previously serving as a student intern with the Incident Response and Security Team. He received his cybersecurity degree at Illinois State, just before the COVID shut down began. When asked what he likes about cybersecurity as a career path, he said he enjoys learning the many aspects of IT to further his understanding of cybersecurity.

 Phuong Cao is a Student Research Scientist who is currently finishing his PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering. Previously he worked at several research labs (IBM, Microsoft) and companies (LinkedIn, Akamai). He has experience in statistical data analyses, machine learning, and formal methods applied to critical problems in security such as reverse engineering malware, detecting attacks using probabilistic graphical models, and verifying correctness of smart contracts. Phuong says he enjoys helping secure NCSA infrastructure while producing novel security research. Currently, Phuong is evaluating factor graph-based attack detection on XSEDE logs, analyzing RDP logs, and verifying security policies in federated authentication.