Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Associate professor appointed to federal privacy advisory board

In addition to teaching students in the computer science department, Kevin Fu, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Massachusetts, will now also be advising the federal government on issues of privacy and security.

Fu has been appointed to the National Institute of Standards and Technology Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board for a four-year term. The advisory board is a group of professionals from academia, government and the private sector who, “identify emerging managerial, technical, administrative, and physical safeguard issues relative to information security and privacy” and advise federal officials on how to implement such safeguards, according to the NIST website.

Board members report their findings to the Secretary of Commerce, the Director of the National Security Agency, the appropriate committees of the Congress and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, according to the group’s website. They do not extend their services to private sector or classified federal systems.

The membership of the Board includes 12 members and a chairperson. Members of the Board include a software engineer from Google, Inc., a senior fellow from IBC Center for The Business of Government, and an auditor from the Social Security Administration.

“I look forward to serving on the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board,” said Fu in a press release from the university. “One of my roles will pertain to security and privacy issues that affect health information technology and medical devices.”

Fu’s research at the University focuses on such issues. “My research objective is to improve the security and privacy of embedded systems. My research focuses on two large classes of such computational devices: computational RFIDs and implantable medical devices,” Fu stated on his website.

He wrote that his research on RFID security was what led him to the issue of securing medical treatments and keeping medical information private. “Implantable medical devices increasingly use wireless communication for monitoring patients in hospitals and homes. Such medical devices include heart rate sensors, pacemakers, defibrillators, drug delivery systems and neurostimulators. These devices can contain sensitive personal data and other health-related information,” according to Fu’s website.

Fu added, “Thus, patients will desire strong security and privacy to gain confidence in these emerging therapies and infrastructure for collecting telemetry. Yet there is little understanding of how to model or mitigate malicious threats against such untrusted infrastructure. My approach to improving the security and privacy of pervasive healthcare involves the design and implementation of zero-power security modules for implantable devices, vulnerability analysis, threat modeling, and patient studies.”

In addition to his research and work with NIST, Fu enjoys teaching on topics that are “computery and mind bending” as well as “artisanal bread making, coffee roasting, general cookery, and modern Epicureanism.”

– Collegian News Staff

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