Dr. Paulo Costa

Biography:

Paulo Costa has applied his significant experience as a fighter pilot to a career specializing in the field of electronic warfare and flight safety, which in conjunction with his research on probabilistic reasoning has led to applications in cyber and transportation security, heterogeneous data fusion, and decision support systems in healthcare, defense, and other areas. These topics are at the core of his classroom activities at both graduate and undergraduate levels, as well as his research path. Costa leads the research of graduate-level students in understanding security objectives and verification protocols, bringing in the science of probabilistic reasoning and challenging PhD-level candidates to consider theory and methods for building computationally efficient software agents that reason, act, and learn in environments characterized by noisy and chaotic traffic.

Costa is a key researcher in the field of probabilistic ontologies and developed innovative applications and extensions that aid in the fight against cyber-warfare. In addition to his Mason assignments as the Chair of the Cyber Security Engineering Department and Director of the C5I Center, Dr. Costa is Vice President for Securing Automation and Supply Chain Security (cymanii.org). He is a former President and current elected member of the Board of Directors of the International Society of Information Fusion (isif.org), as well as an IEEE Senior Member (SM13).

Title: Industry 4.0 - The Web is Dark and Full of Terrors! 

Real World Challenges of Industrial Digitalization within a Treacherous Cyberspace.

Abstract: The fourth industrial revolution, known as Industry 4.0, is characterized by the rapid digitalization of the manufacturing industry and its associated supply chain. It relies heavily on the various technologies being discussed at ISNCC 2024, such as IIOT connectivity, use of AI/ML, advanced communication protocols and others that when combined bring a wealth of possibilities to the manufacturing industry. Unfortunately, digitalization also opens a pandora box of security issues that are not immediately obvious to those in the industry. This, combined with the ever growing presence of advanced cybersecurity threats such as ramsomware attacks, has put the whole industry on a conundrum, where the benefits of digitalization are essential for manufacturers to be competitive, but the risks associated with it are not well understood by many in the industry. This presentation explores this complex environment and brings light to a few initiatives aimed at addressing the associated challenges.