peter: you also have worked at the national institute of standards and technology. at is that, and what are you doing? prof. wijesekera: the national institute of standards and technology has a division for , it is a laboratory for cybersecurity. i work there as a visiting researcher, and most of my work there has been forensics. i have worked with a couple of research scientists there, and i also have students from the university that sometimes participate in that research. and it has been going on for a long time. i really enjoy working with the government. peter: professor wijesekera, we invited you here because you are a presenter at black hat this year. first of all, what is black hat? how would you describe lack hat hat?scribe black prof. wijesekera: that is essentially people who work on the creation side. they are not really hacker hackers, but they are people who like to expose certain vulnerabilities that exist in different systems, and try to bring into society people who should know about that, and make them aware so that the vulnerabilities would be clos

only a handful of these scales worldwide this one is in the united states at the national institute of standards and technology. the high precision scale is based on the principle of electromagnetic force compensation this is how it works the gravitational force of a test mass is balanced with an electromagnetic force the magnetic field is provided by a permanent magnet a coil of wire is immersed in that field. it's like a coil in a loudspeaker the coil is in the permanent magnetic field and electrical current is run through it to generate a force that force is used to balance the downward force of the weight it's a way to measure weight using an electrical current. mission in other words the electrical current is adjusted until the upward force on the coil perfectly balances the downward force of the weight the 2nd step is called the velocity mode of precision laser called an interferometer shown here in green is used to measure the position and velocity of the coil. the aim is to measure the voltage that is created in the process. then we need gravitational acceleration small g. 9.81 meters per 2nd per 2nd i

voting system manufacturers, test laboratories, and federal partners from the national institute of standards and technology and the security agency to quickly develop processes and procedures to incentivize the efficient deployment of patches or updates to voting systems in the field. doing so is crucial to the security of our election systems but they do not exist in a vacuum. onlier i mentioned our work the bsg -- we are also working on drafting the new technical requirements crucial to developing the next generation of voting equipment. these efforts to complement the important conversations happening every day in the yield on issues like assessing and mitigating risks or adopting a coordinated vulnerability so that potential issues can be reported and fixed before they can be exploited. this forum will be an important step in identifying areas where we has an agency can do more to improve election technology -- would it be nice if we could solve everything? i suspect this will be more of a start then a finish but we must get the job done. we must strive to maintain and improve testing and certification

only a handful of these scales worldwide this one is in the united states at the national institute of standards and technology. the high precision scale is based on the principle of electromagnetic force compensation this is how it works the gravitational force of a test mass is balanced with an electromagnetic force the magnetic field is provided by a permanent magnet a coil of wire is immersed in that field. it's like a coil in a loudspeaker and the coil is in a permanent magnetic field an electrical current is run through it to generate a force that force is used to balance the downward force of the weight it's a way to measure weight using an electrical current of. a mission in other words the electrical current is adjusted until the upward force on the coil perfectly balances the downward force of the weight the 2nd step is called the velocity mode of precision laser called an interferometer shown here in green is used to measure the position and velocity of the coil. the aim is to measure the voltage that is created in the process. then we need gravitational acceleration small g. 9.81 meters per 2nd per

row -- rome mine. >> i'm chuck rommine, director of the information technology laboratory at the department of commerce's national institute of standards and technology, or nist. thank you for the aunt to appear before you today to discuss nist's role in standards and techest text for facial recognition technology. in area of biomitt tries nist has been working with and can private sectors senses. the 1960s and improves the accuracy, quality, usability, interoperatability and consistency of identity management estimates and ensures that united states interests are represented in international arena. nist research has provide state of the art technology benchmarks and guidance to industry and u.s. government agencies that depend upon biometrics recognition. nist lead national and international consensus standards activities in biometrics such as facial recognition technology but also in crypto graphing, software enand sims reliable and security conformance testing, all essential to access rail the festival deployment of information and communication statements interoperable, rely, securable and usable, i we report gaps and limitations of cu

pro v&v is a national institute of standards and technology accredited national voluntary laboratory ccreditation program, noting -- excuse me, voting systems test laboratory looking in huntsville, alabama, and is an eac easy accredited g systems test laboratory. he has over 18 18 years of development and test experience with a solid background in software background and implantation using optic oriented analysis and design. he provides technical expertise and guidance to entities in the voting systems test arena including federal and state certification bodies and voting system manufacturers and is accepted by the voting systems industry as subject matter expert in voting systems and voting systems test and certification. he is serving as examiner to multiple states intellectual body providing technical guidance and expertise for examinations and re-examination of electronic voting systems to federal and state requirements. and last at the end of our table with jesse peterson, certified security specialist in i.t. consult with over 20 years of experience in computer-related fields in

, that will harden and mitigate the electric grid from cyberattacks carried out in partnership with the department of homeland security, national institute for standards and technology in the national science foundation and education and workforce was one of the efforts of cyber security that is often underappreciated is the fact that it is also a workforce issue. we don't have enough people trained and working in cybersecurity as we need, there are hundreds of thousands more openings in the next few years many of which in my home area got great work done at carnegie mellon but also university of pittsburgh cyberlaw institute among others training people up for this. that is what these programs, we are excited to talk about demand we recognize the ranking a member for an opening statement. >> thank you for hosting this hearing. i will ask about the population of pittsburgh, the metro area is 1.5 million. that is a lot of electricity. we appreciate you hosting this hearing. this afternoon we will hear from expert witnesses on the existing strengths and weaknesses of the nation's electric grid and the impact potential attacks and incidents could have on grid reliabili

next to ed is jack laboratory director which he cofounded of a national institute of standards and technology accredited national voluntary accreditation program voting systems test laboratory located in alabama eac accredited laboratory over 18 years of development and test experience of solid background implementation object-oriented analysis and design providing technical expertise and guidance to those arenas including federal and state certification voting system manufacturers and accepted as the subject matter expert and test and certification. currently serving as election bodies providing technical guidance and expertise for the examination and re-examination of those systems to federal and state requirements. at the end of the table we have jesse peterson certified security specialist and it consultant 20 years of experience in computer related field including hardware software functional and performance testing, networking and network design. nineteen years of security experience including implementation and prevention of solutions patch management detection and removal of malicious

manufacturers, our voting system test laboratories as well theur federal partners from national institute of standards and technology and the toersecurity security agency quickly develop processes and procedures to incentivize the efficient employment of patches or updates to voting systems in the field. doing so is crucial to the security of our election systems. on issues like assessing and mitigating risk in today's threat environment or adopting vulnerability disclosure program so that potential issues can be reported and fixed before they can be exploited. today's forum will be an important step in identifying areas where we could do more to improve election technology. it would be nice if we could solve everything in the next three hours but i suspect this will be more of a start than a finish that we must get the job done. we must strive to maintain and improve a testing and certification program that provides real value to the elections community without adding unnecessary burdens or costs. if there are avenues where we as an agency can do more programmatically or administratively, we must consider such sugg