Tag Archive for: director

Henderson County elections director answers if it is possible to hack local voting machines

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Scenes from 2022 early, one-stop voting in Henderson County.

Scenes from 2022 early, one-stop voting in Henderson County.

Henderson County Elections Director Karen Hebb discussed with the board of commissioners Monday night whether or not it is possible to hack local voting machines.

Chair Bill Lapsley said the commissioners have been asked about whether or not hacking the machines is possible. At the beginning of the commissioners’ meeting, Henderson County resident Karl Gessler called the election machines untrustworthy and said recent elections have been rigged. He requested that the commissioners “not pay for election-rigging machines.”

“One of the questions that we get asked on occasion is does our elections board staff check to make sure no one is hacking into our election machines,” Lapsley said to Hebb. “That to me is a very serious insinuation, and I would like to hear from you that you are aware of that charge and that you do whatever is necessary to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“First off, there is no way to hack into our machines,” Hebb said. “There is no modem, there is no way that you can access the machine.”

“Once the machine reads the ballot, it stores the information on a thumb drive. We take that thumb drive out after the polls are closed and upload to a computer that has never been hooked to the internet. The information is then placed on another thumb drive that is taken to a separate computer and uploaded to the state and then that thumb drive is never used again,” she said.

“So, there is no way that anyone can get into our machines or get into our coding because it is never hooked to the internet, and there is no way it can be hacked,” according to the elections director.

“We keep all of our machines in a locked cage… we have a lock that is accessed with your thumb, so only employees are able to come into where our machines are kept; our programming room is always locked when we are not using it, so we try everything we can to make sure there is double security as far as the machines go and it cannot be accessed,” said Hebb.

Scenes from 2022 early, one-stop voting in Henderson County.

Scenes from 2022 early, one-stop voting in Henderson County.

Vice Chair Rebecca McCall asked Hebb if random audits, such as hand counts…

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Amit Serper joins Sternum as Director of Security Research

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Sternum welcomes Amit Serper, an international cybersecurity expert, as its new Director of Security Research. As a veteran cybersecurity professional with a record of excellence in the field, Amit bolsters Sternum’s vast research capabilities with his decades of expertise in reverse engineering, vulnerability exploitation, and ethical hacking.

The global total of cyberattacks is surging year on year as hackers exploit the ever-growing trend toward digitalization. An uptick in international tensions is further exacerbating the trend as Russia allegedly unleashed its cyber-arsenal on Ukraine in the run-up to its ground incursion. Previously, the U.S. intelligence community blamed Moscow for NotPetya malware attacks on Ukrainian networks, which destroyed sensitive data on a variety of servers and spilled out beyond Ukraine to wreak havoc on businesses.

Amit Serper, who found a “vaccine” for NotPetya, now joins Sternum’s leadership team to lend the company his vast expertise in cybersecurity. Amit will be in charge of Sternum’s security research, leading its team of cybersecurity experts as they work to transform the IoT defense paradigm.

Before joining Sternum, Amit worked as the Director of Security Research for Akamai Technologies, a U.S. cloud and cybersecurity giant, where he focused on enterprise network protection. Prior to that, he held the offices of North American VP of Security Research for Guardicore, a network segmentation company, ahead of its acquisition by Akamai. Amit also held a number of positions in Cybereason, working his way up from Senior Security Researcher to VP for Security Strategy. His private sector career followed years of service in the Israeli military and intelligence, where he took on a variety of security roles and projects.

Sternum’s single-click security solution gives any connected device the ability to protect itself against hacking attempts in real-time. It seeks out the generic fingerprints of various attack types such as command injection and buffer overflow to strike the attempted attack down and protect the runtime integrity of the secured device against both zero-day and one-day attacks. Its design fosters a proactive…

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Interview with Director Pramod Kumar Jain

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IIT (BHU), Varanasi is one of the oldest engineering institutes in India. Located in Uttar Pradesh, the institution started its life as the Banaras Engineering College in 1919, and became the Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University in 1968. The Indian Institute of Technology tag was conferred in 2012. 

Prof. Pramod Kumar Jain, Director, IIT (BHU) Varanasi was appointed as the Director at IIT – BHU from August 1,  2018. Analytics India Magazine caught up with him to understand the IIT’s contribution to the field of AI & ML in India, and the ongoing research at the premiere institute. IIT (BHU), Varanasi has 13 branches of engineering and three inter-disciplinary schools.

AIM: What are the major drivers in scientific research?

Prof. Pramod Kumar Jain: Scientific research requires relevance of purpose, originality of objectives, reproducibility of results, and involvement of critical brain faculties. It is an original investigation directed towards gaining new knowledge through existing concepts. It is generally done in a focused area which may lead to the generation of new and better insights through creativity and critical thinking. 

AIM: Tell us about the ongoing research in the field of AI/ML and data science at IIT (BHU) Varanasi.

Prof. Pramod Kumar Jain: IIT(BHU) has been contributing to theoretical as well as applied research in the core areas of AI/ML, with the support of various government agencies and industries. The area of Data Analytics and Predictive Technologies (DAPT) has been identified as one of the vibrant and emerging fields. DAPT refers to applying pattern recognition and inference engine as a smart decision support interface to take timely decisions and deploy necessary actuation to take holistic control of the real-life situations, either online or offline. Today, the term DAPT is used for systems involving intelligent pattern-recognition based decision support interfaces backed up by densely embedded sensors and actuators, interconnected by the Internet of Things (IoT), with computations occurring either within the network, or at the edge, or in the cloud–to observe, control, and optimise the performance of…

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Techstars London welcomes new managing director

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Techstars, a global investment business that provides access to capital, one-on-one mentorship, and customised programming for early-stage entrepreneurs, has announced the appointment of Saalim Chowdhury as Managing Director of Techstars London. He follows predecessor Eamonn Carey.

Formerly a Partner at 500 Startups, Chowdhury will lead the growth of the startup accelerator in London, as it expands to two programmes a year, in April and September. Techstars London will open to startups across new sectors, welcoming more b2b startups in healthtech, fintech and web3, and using technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Techstars London is looking for early-stage founders who would benefit from a programme that develops entrepreneurial talent, accelerates startup growth, and gets them closer to product-market fit. Whilst the programme is London-based, Chowdhury’s focus will be on attracting startups around the UK and will be touring the country to do so.

Speaking on his appointment as the new Managing Director of Techstars London, Saalim Chowdhury, said, “What drew me to Techstars is the deep commitment to developing founders and communities, especially here in the UK and Europe. Global rivals continue to dramatically increase class sizes, with little or no footprint in Europe, but Techstars is staying at 12 companies per batch. Instead, we’re increasing the number of programmes in key cities like London and hiring more talent to deliver them, so that we can continue to foster personal connections and development, individual attention and a deeply bonded community.”

“I want to work with founders that are creating services for new audiences, or changing the way convention has been dictated for years, mostly by bringing perspectives from one industry to another. There must also be a positive impact on society. The goal is to create stronger startups from a more diverse range of backgrounds.”

“Eamonn has left big shoes to fill, and I am eager to continue and expand upon his great work. I’m delighted to lead this growth from London, as Techstars doubles down in the UK”

Over 200 UK startups have been through a Techstars…

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