Course Schedule
2 Day Dojo. The dates and times are yet to be decided, but they’ll likely fall between May 14 (Sat) and May 17 (Tues), inclusive.
IN-PERSON and ONLINE attendance available (updated April 22, 22).
Course Abstract
Cognitive security is the application of information security principles, practices, and tools to misinformation, disinformation, and influence operations. It takes a socio-technical lens to high-volume, high-velocity, and high-variety forms of “something is wrong on the internet”.
This course starts with the ways that users and groups are influenced online, from user experience, marketing, adtech and online political campaigns through to astroturfing, online psyops, disinformation campaigns. We’ll look at the techniques and tactics used to create influence, the tools, methods and design patterns being created to detect, counter and mitigate against it, the emerging discipline of cognitive security and how it meshes with other work including information security, machine learning and geopolitics.
The course is practical, arranged around a set of python notebooks and open-source tools, but also rooted in deep theories of why and how disinformation campaigns happen.
About the Instructor: Sara-Jayne Terp
SJ applies information security practices to defend against
disinformation and other online harms, including extremism. She’s run
large incident responses, set up response systems for election- and
health-based cognitive security around the world, advises companies on
disinformation risk management, and has built a body of research and
tools for running and operating cognitive security operations centres,
including the DISARM (formerly AMITT) frameworks for rapidly sharing
disinformation data. SJ teaches cybersecurity and cognitive security at
the University of Maryland, consults through Threet.consulting, is a
Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, and is Chief Scientist at the
Disarm Foundation. She has Masters degrees in Artificial Intelligence,
and Pattern Analysis and Neural Networks. Her technical background
includes information fusion, crowdsourcing, unmanned systems (including
human-machine teaming), data governance, nationstate development, and crisis response.
About the Instructor: Pablo Breuer
Dr. Pablo is executive director for enterprise security architecture at Morgan Stanley, a non-resident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council's GeoTech Center, and twenty-two year veteran of the US Navy with tours that include military director of US Special Operations Command Donovan Group and senior military advisor and innovation officer to SOFWERX, the National Security Agency, and US Cyber Command as well as being the Director of C4 at US Naval Forces Central Command. He is a DoD Cyber Cup and Defcon Black Badge winner and has been faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School, National University, California State University Monterey Bay, as well as a Visiting Scientist at Carnegie Mellon CERT/SEI. Pablo is also a founder of the non-profit DISARM Foundation and a co-author of the Disinformation Analysis and Response Measures (DISARM) Framework.
Course Learning Objectives
After successfully completing the course, students will be able to:
Elaborate how information security and cognitive security interact
Evaluate persuasive technology at different scales
Evaluate influence operation mechanisms and tracking techniques
Use tools to investigate account and network-level coordinated inauthentic activities
Understand ethical behaviour around misinformation and disinformation response and research