Teaching at the Professorship of Cyber Trust

Course Instructor: Prof. Jens Grossklags, Ph.D.

Description:

Cybercriminal activities as well as other undesirable or malicious activities have increased in prevalence over the last decade. At the same time, the efforts and capabilities of industrial and academic researchers to understand these phenomena have made significant improvements. In this seminar, we will discuss a range of recent data-driven studies focusing, for example, on Spear-Phishing, Ransomware, Cybercriminal Marketplaces, Online Fraud etc., but also other challenges of societal interest such as Cyber-Bullying and Fake News. Each participant of the seminar will deeply engage with a key study to understand its focus, methodology, (data) limitations, and achievements. It is further expected to understand each work in the context of related studies, e.g., from security industry research labs. Participants of the seminar are expected to build on the literature to develop research objectives for further study, and/or top pursue their own studies within the scope of the seminar.

Requirement:

No specific knowledge required. General interest in interdisciplinary privacy and security topics highly desirable; knowledge in diverse methods of data analytics desirable for practical topics. The seminar language is English.

Note:

The seminar will meet for 1-2 introductory sessions at the beginning of the semester (there will be no pre-course meeting). The presentation of results will follow in the second half of the semester in the form of longer seminar sessions (Blocktermine). Students are expected to deliver a concise report and a comprehensive presentation about their findings. The exact timeline will be discussed in the introductory sessions. The formation of 2-person teams is possible with approval by the instructor.

According to the policy of our chair, deregistration from courses is possible until the first regular course meeting by written notice to the instructor. Further, regular attendance and participation in seminar meetings will be compulsory and also be part of the assessment.

TUM Online: Course description

Application via  http://docmatching.in.tum.de/

Course Instructor: Emmanuel Syrmoudis

Description:

The seminar explores the nascent and growing field of the economics of privacy and cyber security and related security/risk governance aspects. Personal information has become a primary economic good for legitimate companies and is collected for countless purposes. For example, targeted advertisements, personalization and price discrimination are enabled by the automated wholesale accumulation of users’ trails; online and offline. Given this background, the key objective of the seminar is a better understanding of the current and future marketplace for personal information. We will draw on methods from computer science as well as the economic and behavioral sciences to contribute to a rigorous comprehension of the challenges and solution approaches for current privacy and security challenges.

SPECIAL FOCUS TOPIC WINTER 2024: In this seminar, we will focus on an economic response to the growing abuse of (browser and device) fingerprinting techniques in the online advertisement space to complement the engineering-oriented view on the problem. Seminar theses will focus on assessing the state-of-the-art of fingerprinting techniques, on a conceptualization of monetization approaches in the context of fingerprinting, on evaluating the initiatives from large stakeholders (e.g., Apple, Google) to address fingerprinting, and other solution approaches.

Course objectives:

Seminar meetings will be held in the lecture period during the semester. The presentation of results will follow in the final weeks of the lecture period.

Meetings take place in Garching, online / hybrid participation is not possible.

Students are expected to deliver a concise report and a comprehensive presentation about their findings. The exact timeline will be discussed in the introductory sessions. Collaboration in two-person teams is possible with agreement of the instructor.

Requirement:
No specific knowledge required. General interest in interdisciplinary privacy and security topics highly desirable. The seminar language is English.

Note:

Information and materials will be made available via Moodle.

Regular seminar meeting is planned for Tuesday, between 10.00 and 12.30 in room 01.08.033 (CIT building Garching).

According to the policy of our chair, deregistration from courses is possible until the first regular course meeting by written notice to the instructor. Further, regular attendance and participation in seminar meetings will be compulsory and also be part of the assessment.

Application via http://docmatching.in.tum.de/

TUM Online: Course Description

Pre-course meeting:
We will hold an information meeting on 03.07.24, 11:00 - 11:30 via Zoom:
https://tum-conf.zoom-x.de/j/61660272433?pwd=PEDffCBIWdr61Yc3aixKVCRZ5tjm33.1
Meeting ID: 616 6027 2433
Passcode: 508601

Course Instructor: Mo Chen, Ph.D.

Description:

Behavioral insights are “an inductive approach to policy-making combining fundamental insights from psychology, cognitive science, and social science with empirically-tested results to discover how humans actually make choices” (by OECD). There is a trend of governments and organizations applying behavioral insights to public policy to shape and influence behavior. At the same time, the past decade witnessed a global interest in digital tools to influence behavior. Tools driven by the rapidly advancing technology development around big data as well as artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly integrated in social governance. As a result, behavioral insights can now function as a policy-making tool to utilize the insights generated by big data, and the relationship between behavioral insights and big data is growing ever closer. In the seminar, we will deepen our understanding of behavioral insights in public policy making from an interdisciplinary point of view.

Course objectives:

Understand behavioral insights in public policy making from an interdisciplinary point of view.
Become familiar with the basic concepts and application of nudging in public policy.

Prepare and write a scientific paper (English; 8-10 pages)
Conduct a presentation of your topic (English; 15 minutes + 10 minutes discussion)

Requirement:
Strong interest in interdisciplinary work.

Note:
Regular seminar meeting is planned for Tuesday, between 12.00 and 14.00 in room 00.13.054 (CIT building Garching).

According to the policy of our chair, deregistration from courses is possible until the first regular course meeting by written notice to the instructor. Further, regular attendance and participation in seminar meetings will be compulsory and also be part of the assessment.

TUM Online: Course Description

Application via http://docmatching.in.tum.de/

Weekly group meeting of the Chair of Cyber Trust for members and guests of the chair. The seminar includes research discussions and talks about topics related to the activities of the chair.