Highlights of Graduate Student Research
In addition to pursuing class and lab exercises, SANS master's program candidates conduct faculty-guided research, write and publish their work, and present their findings in webcasts. Here are some highlights of their recent findings. You can follow the links in each of the sections below to find a complete copy of their papers, and you can visit the SANS Reading room to view these and other students' research results.
SANS Technology Institute Research Review Journal
Explore published research from 2020 by SANS.edu master’s degree students in the inaugural issue of the SANS Technology Institute Research Review Journal.
Research topics include:
- Cyber Defense Operations
- Leadership
- Digital Forensics
- Cloud Security
- Industrial Control Systems Security
Download the journal here.
See How Our Students Made an Impact in 2020
A Year in Review: Distinguished Student Publications of 2020
Throughout 2020, research by SANS Technology Institute master's degree students was accepted and published in some of the leading cybersecurity academic journals. Notable accomplishments include:
- Sean McElroy "Detecting Server-Side Request Forgery Attacks on Amazon Web Services" was published in The ISSA Journal’s Feb. 2020 issue, "Offensive Cyber Operations Abroad Influence US Congressional Legislation." Read it here.
The following 3 students were published in the same edition of the Journal of Cyber Security and Information Systems, “Data-Centric Environment Rise of Internet-Based Modern Warfare ‘iWar’ – Survivability, Availability and Accessibility without Geographic Borders” Volume: 7, Number: 4. Posted: 04/09/2020. Read it here.
- Ryan J O’Grady “Times Change and Your Training Data Should Too: The Effect of Training Data Recency on Twitter Classifiers”
- Kenneth W. Strayer “Can the “Gorilla” Deliver? Assessing the Security of Google’s New “Thread” Internet of Things (IoT) Protocol”
- Steven M. Launius “Evaluation of Comprehensive Taxonomies for Information Technology Threats”
You can also find these, and other student white papers in the SANS Reading Room, indicated in red with the "SANS.edu Graduate Student Research" tag. Papers published here have earned the distinction of an "A" grade in the graduate-level Technical Research & Communication Practicum, a course required in the M.S. in Information Security Engineering (MSISE) curriculum.
Cybersecurity Research Papers
Master's degree candidates at SANS.edu conduct research that is relevant, has real world impact, and often provides cutting-edge advancements to the field of cybersecurity, all under the guidance and review of our world-class instructors. Here are some highlights of their recent findings.
Featured Papers
- September 2021: Cloud Multi-Account Policy EnforcementAndy Huang
- September 2021: Deconstructing Information Security AnalysisDaniel Severance
- September 2021: Expired Domain Dumpster DivingChristopher DeWeese
- September 2021: Increasing Visibility by Cracking Password-Protected Malware at ScaleDerek Thomas
- August 2021: Unaccepted Third-Party Cookies as the/a Leading Indicator of CNAME TrackersDan Welygan
- August 2021: ICS within the NIS Directive should be ATT&CK®edKory Koziar
Webcasts
Experts who struggle to communicate well are often unable to optimize their impact upon their organization. Our master's program candidates not only learn advanced technical skills, but they also experience and learn how to communicate their insights and realizations to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Students present their published work to faculty members via webcast and recordings are made available afterwards to the public. A selection of these presentations is available here.
Featured Webcasts
- Verifying Sketchy Windows Apps
Speaker: Joal Mendonsa, MSISE Candidate, IT Specialist, Federal Government - Cloud Security: A SANS Survey on Customer Cloud Security
Speaker: TJ Banasik, MSISE Candidate, Senior Program Manager - Cloud & Enterprise Security, Microsoft - Why So Serious? Insecure Object Deserialization Demystified
Speaker: Karim Lalji, MSISE, Managing Security Consultant, TELUS - Using COIN doctrine to improve Cyber Defense Speaker: Sebastien Godin, MSISE Candidate, Telecommunications Officer at DND
- Continuous Security: Implementing the Critical Controls in a DevOps Environment Speaker: Alyssa Robinson, MSISM Candidate, Software Development Manager, Cisco Systems, Inc.
- Risk-based privilege management Speaker: Christoph Eckstein, MSISE Candidate, Information Security Specialist, Deutsche Bank
- Cloud Security Monitoring Speaker: Balaji Balakrishnan, MSISE Candidate, Senior Information Security Officer, The World Bank
See How Our Students Made an Impact in 2019
A Year in Review: Distinguished Student Publications of 2019
Throughout 2019, research by SANS Technology Institute master's degree students was accepted and published in some of the leading cybersecurity academic journals. Notable accomplishments include:
- Balaji Balakrishnan's research, "Cloud Security Monitoring with AI-ML Infused Technologies," was accepted in CSIAC's Journal of Cyber Security and Information Systems and published in the April 2019 issue, Artificial Intelligence the Next "Nuclear Arms Race" - "Space Race To The Edge" Read it here
- Sean Goodwin's white paper, "Attackers Inside the Walls: Detecting Malicious Activity," was featured in The ISSA Journal's August 2019 Issue, The ToolBox: Tools of the Infosec Pro Read it here [Note: ISSA membership is required for access to the full journal issue]
- Michael Hoffman's work, "Gaining Endpoint Log Visibility in ICS Environments," was published in CSIAC's Journal of Cyber Security and Information Systems issue, Resilient Industrial Control Systems (ICS) & Cyber Physical Systems (CPS): The Growing Cyber-Kinetic Threats in August 2019 Read it here
- Jon-Michael Lacek's white paper, "Changing the DevOps Culture One Security Scan at a Time" was published in the November 2019 issue of The ISSA Journal, on DevOps Security Read it here [Note: ISSA membership is required for access to the full journal issue]
You can also find these, and other student white papers in the SANS Reading Room, indicated in red with the "SANS.edu Graduate Student Research" tag. Papers published here have earned the distinction of an "A" grade in the graduate-level Technical Research & Communication Practicum, a course required in the M.S. in Information Security Engineering (MSISE) curriculum.
