For UCI Dean Marios Papaefthymiou, giving up your privacy is just a click away.
“We all go and we click on the boxes and we agree with who knows what. And before we know it, our data is basically up for grabs,” he told the Business Journal on Aug. 19.
Papaefthymiou is the dean of the Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Sciences at UCI, giving him a front-row seat for developments in the cyberworld.
Papaefthymiou is also among the leaders of UCI’s Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute (CPRI), a UCI program that pulls together 80 experts from academia, businesses, governments and civil liberties.
The institute focuses primarily on the policy side of an area that the dean says has been a “Wild West” for many years.
For example, someone without a Facebook account may appear in a picture posted on that popular social media platform with other people, with text identifying who’s who.
“Now, Facebook will go in and start recognizing all these folks and attaching names, and before you know it, you’re basically in their databases, even though you never had a Facebook account. Now you’re there to be harvested. Your presence online is to be harvested.”
Users of the harvested data can include marketers hawking their wares to specific consumer groups. The picture, name and information can spread online far and wide, “making it everyone’s business” even without the person’s consent.
“You give up your privacy, although you never really were given a choice to do so,” he said. “Some people would naturally not like to be exposed to that kind of analysis.”
3,600 Undergraduates
Papaefthymiou has an in-depth knowledge of how technology works. He holds 21 US and international patents on energy-efficient computing and is co-founder and chief scientist of Cyclos Semiconductor, a Michigan spin-off commercializing energy-efficiency solutions for high-end computers.
Papaefthymiou grew up in Athens and studied at the National Technical University of Athens before transferring to California Institute of Technology, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He then went on to earn master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Previously, he taught at Yale and was chair of the Computer Science and Engineering Division at University of Michigan.
In 2017, he became dean of the school that now has more than 3,600 undergraduate students, 400 doctoral students and postdocs, 600 research and professional master’s students and 100 faculty representing 3 departments — Computer Science, Informatics and Statistics, according to the school’s website.
Generational Differences
In general, he says the cyber-threats are getting more widespread.
When it comes to notions of privacy, Papaefthymiou says he’s noticed a distinct difference between generations.
He notes that young people tend to be “not guarded.
“They kind of take it for granted that things are out in the open,” added Papaefthymiou, who is also a professor at the information and computer sciences school.
With daily news reports about hacking and constant threats, what is the biggest risk in cybersecurity?
“It’s the human factor, by all means the human factor,” he said.
“By far, the most effective attacks are the ones that basically do some kind of phishing campaign. And you get humans to buy into that and give out passwords or click on links that take them to ransomware.”
The second biggest risk involves not keeping computer anti-virus protections and other defenses up to date. There are also ways to detect dangerous anomalies in computer systems.
“The probability of an up-to-date system being hacked is much, much lower,” he said.
“The systems that fall behind in terms of their updating, they are the ones that are targeted.”
‘Great time’ for Small Firms to Hire Tech Students: Dean
The job market mood at UCI’s information and computer sciences school is very positive, though the prospects are not quite as strong as they were a couple of years ago.
Dean Marios Papaefthymiou says that in 2021 the job prospects were “hot.”
And now, he says that while the market is not weak, “I think I would call it a little bit soft.”
The usual high-tech giants aren’t “literally vacuuming up all your students” as in the past.
“It’s a great time for the smaller companies to hire people,” according to Papaefthymiou .
“There are tons of companies out there that are hiring.”
As to the general situation at the school:
“Overall, it’s fine, I would say, more than just fine,” he told the Business Journal on Aug. 19.
