How USC’s ISI helps internet users from around the world
Terry Benzel and John Heidemann discuss B-Root, cybersecurity and other internet research at ISI.
From Cancer Research to Smart Cities: USC Builds Platform to Test Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing Technologies
New infrastructure will help evaluate data sharing techniques for healthcare, transportation, and other sectors as part of NSF’s $10M privacy initiative
Click Here for Confusion: The State of Privacy Settings
Finding a privacy setting on social media should be simple. But a new study from USC’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI) shows it’s anything but.
CSET
18TH CYBER SECURITY EXPERIMENTATION AND TEST WORKSHOP
CSET'25 was co-located with the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC). The workshop was held on Monday, December 8, preceding the ACSAC 2025 conference, which was located in Honolulu, Hawaii.
We hope that CSET'26 will be co-located with the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC). Stay tuned for more information!
Cross-Cutting Research Areas
Cyber-Physical Systems
Understanding, securing and advancing cyber-physical systems is embodied in our work on embedded systems, verification of untrusted cyber-physical modules and analysis of cyber-attacks on interconnected complex cyber-physical systems. As “smart” devices continue to connect to the internet at a rapid pace, optimizing and securing their integration is critical -- in addition to protecting underlying infrastructure, such as the power grid, that is the heartbeat of cyber ecosystems.
Edge Computing
As demand for information transit speed increases exponentially, there are hard questions around Network Embedding, System Security, and the use of Advanced Encryption Mechanisms. New approaches to data storage and computation capabilities at the edge inform our work in identification of applications within encrypted flows, recognition of obscured payloads, and protection of sensitive data residing in or transiting through network slices. This work will contribute to secure, high performance edge computing for the next generation of networking.
Cybersecurity
The pervasive nature of cyber threats grows exponentially. Our research spans specific technologies to large scale experimentation and analysis. Some of our key research programs include privacy-safe data sharing, defending against denial of service, malware handling and management, and binary analysis.
Internet Measurement
Our goal is to improve the Internet by discovering new ways to understand network topology, traffic, use and abuse. We explore challenges in networking and cybersecurity from several perspectives. We develop and operate unique network measurement and analysis Infrastructure that we employ to address important problems in network reliability and security. Our research builds models to assist with real world dilemmas, such as natural disasters and power grid outages, to enhance internet agility and robustness.
Experimental Research Methodologies
Conducting experimentation to explore and evaluate research in cybersecurity and networking requires new scientific methods, tools and infrastructure. As a leader in cyber experimentation we architect, develop, and operate advanced cyber infrastructure testbeds. Our work creates models, experimentation frameworks, tools, and approaches to enhance the science of cyber experimentation to make experiments reusable, repeatable and robust.
