Tag Archive for: utsa

UTSA professor’s thrift store score becomes priceless addition to Georgia museum | UTSA Today | UTSA

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While the artwork itself was striking, so too was the crisp, clear blue signature in the painting’s lower right-hand corner. Pugh realized he had come across an original painting and immediately searched the web to find out more about Keith Bankston.

According to the Digital Library of Georgia, Bankston was born and raised in Macon. He was inspired to pursue a career in art during a trip to Paris shortly after his high school graduation. After attending Florida State, he would return to Middle Georgia to teach art in the Bibb County public schools while simultaneously working to establish himself as an exhibiting artist. However, his fledgling art career was cut short when he died from AIDS in 1992 at the age of 34.

Pugh also found that multiple Bankston paintings were part of the collection at the Tubman African American Museum in Macon, an educational and cultural hub that strives to enrich cultural understanding and present the highest quality art to the Georgia communities it serves. Upon reading about Bankston and the Tubman Museum, Pugh knew he wanted to purchase the painting. But he no longer wanted to keep it.

“I really like it. But something like this—by a known artist in Georgia—would provide the most benefit in a museum in Georgia where everyone else can enjoy it,” Pugh said.

He bought Bankston’s “Eve in the Rose Garden” for $125 and wasted no time reaching out to Jeff Bruce, the director of exhibitions for the Tubman Museum, with intentions of donating the piece. The museum was excited to hear about the painting’s existence and happy to accept his gift. The museum will add “Eve in the Rose Garden” to its permanent collection of African American art.

“Keith Bankston is a beloved figure in the art community in Macon. His story is a kind of tragic tale of what could have been—of great potential that was never fully realized due to the AIDS epidemic.” Bruce said. “His light was just beginning to shine, so we honor the promise of his talent by collecting and exhibiting his work, and by sharing the story of his short but impactful career with young people in Middle Georgia, as well as visitors…

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UTSA researcher part of team protecting EV charging stations from cyberattacks | UTSA Today | UTSA

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Bou-Harb and his fellow researchers wanted to explore the real-life implications of cyberattacks against EV charging systems and how to utilize cybersecurity countermeasures to mitigate them. His team also assessed how exploited systems can attack critical infrastructure such as the power grid.

“Electrical vehicles are the norm nowadays. However, their management stations are susceptible to security exploitations,” said Bou-Harb, who is an associate professor in the Carlos Alvarez College of Business’ Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security. “In this work, we endeavored to uncover their related security weaknesses and understand their consequences on electrical vehicles and the smart grid while providing recommendations and sharing our findings with relevant industry for proactive security remediation.”

The team identified 16 electrical vehicle charging managing systems, which they divided into separate categories such as firmware, mobile, and web apps. They performed an in-depth security analysis on each one.

“We devised a system lookup and collection approach to identify a large number of electrical vehicle charging systems, then leveraged reverse engineering and white-/black-box web application penetration testing techniques to perform a thorough vulnerability analysis,” Bou-Harb said.

The team discovered a range of vulnerabilities amongst the 16 systems and highlighted the 13 most severe vulnerabilities such as missing authentication and cross-site scripting. By exploiting these vulnerabilities, attackers can cause several issues, including manipulating the firmware or disguising themselves as actual users and accessing user data.

According to a recent white paper study by the researchers, “while it is possible to conduct different attacks on various entities within the electrical vehicle ecosystem, in this work, we focus on investigating large-scale attacks that have severe impact on the compromised charging station, its user and the connected power grid.”

During this project, the team developed several security measures, guidelines and best practices for developers to mitigate cyberattacks. They…

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Frost Bank gifts $1M to UTSA School of Data Science for research

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The University of Texas at San Antonio School of Data Science will establish an endowment to support research at the school thanks to a $1 million donation from Frost Bank, the university announced Wednesday.

The Frost Excellence Fund will bolster research activities such as graduate research fellowships, undergraduate research activities, and other programs at the UTSA School of Data Science (SDS) downtown. Construction of the building is expected to be completed in summer 2022.

Frost Bank Chairman and CEO Phil Green said in a statement that the financial institution is glad to continue supporting the partnership between Frost and UTSA, which began in 1969 when the late Tom Frost Jr. Frost advocated for the university’s establishment.

Currently, Green serves on the Be Bold Campaign Leadership Council, a group of community leaders that is heading the largest fundraising campaign in UTSA’s history. Introduced in 2017, the 10-year campaign aims to raise $500 million to support UTSA’s 10-year strategic vision.

In January, UTSA broke ground on the $90 million SDS and National Security Collaboration Center, the soon-to-be anchor of a high-tech downtown hub. The gift from Frost Bank will help the SDS gain national recognition as the university works to become a “world-class,” top-tier research university, UTSA President Taylor Eighmy said in a statement.

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New endowment to assist cybersecurity and software engineering students | UTSA Today | UTSA

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New endowment to assist cybersecurity and software engineering students

DECEMBER 10, 2020 — To commemorate its 20th anniversary, Digital Defense, a leader in vulnerability management and threat assessment solutions, has announced the establishment of a financial endowment for the Department of Computer Science at UTSA. The endowment will provide scholarships and support to students on the path to a software engineering or cybersecurity career. In addition, it will support UTSA and its efforts to further enhance what is already one of the most highly regarded cybersecurity programs in the nation.

Digital Defense has a long-standing relationship with the university, including collaboration through an intern recruitment program. Over the years UTSA’s software engineering and cybersecurity programs have produced exceptional candidates who have transitioned into full-time roles at the company. Additionally, Digital Defense’s Frontline.Cloud software as a service technology is utilized in the UTSA cybersecurity curriculum as a real-world training tool. The security platform helps students test for hidden threats on their target networks and learn about the vulnerability management process.

“The establishment of the UTSA endowment [affords] us the opportunity to help support the education of future generations.”

“We are grateful to be celebrating our 20th anniversary, a significant milestone, and wanted to give back to San Antonio, our hometown community, and the cybersecurity industry at large. Furthering our partnership with UTSA allows us to do both,” said Larry Hurtado, president and CEO of Digital Defense. “We seek out every opportunity to help our nation and organizations around the globe protect their information assets from cyberattacks. The establishment of the UTSA endowment does just that—affording us the opportunity to help support the education of future generations of cybersecurity and engineering professionals and, longer term, providing additional relief to the cybersecurity workforce shortage.”

UTSA is an elite San Antonio higher education institution with national recognition in the cybersecurity field. Its…

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