Curriculum Vitae - The University of Texas at Dallas

Policy management: While discretionary security for relational database is a mature technology, there isa lot to do in discretionary security for XML and RDF databases. For example, how can we specifypolicies? How can we incorporate policies for provenance data management with trust, confidentiality andprivacy? How can semantic web data be secured? What sorts of temporal authorization models areappropriate for the emerging database systems? These are all interesting challenges.Multilevel security: We have focused on multilevel security for various types of databases. Whileresearch in this area is not as active as it used to be, we have learned a lot in conducting research inMLS/DBMSs. Furthermore, such systems are still needed for military and intelligence applications. Thechallenges here include developing new kinds of models and architectures for MLS/DBMSs as well asbuilding high assurance systems.Inference Problem: While this is a very difficult problem, it continues to fascinate researchers. We needto build policy managers that are more efficient and can manage prior knowledge. We also need toexamine the complexity of the problem. There is a lot of interesting theoretical work to do in this area.Secure Distributed and Heterogeneous Databases: While some progress has been made, we need anextensive investigation of security for distributed, heterogeneous and federated databases. What sorts ofaccess control models are appropriate for such systems? How can we share data and still have security andautonomy? How can security policies be integrated across organizations? How can distributedtransactions be executed securely?Secure Object Databases and Applications: There has been work in both discretionary and mandatorysecurity for object databases. How can we apply the principles for object-relational systems since suchsystems are dominating the marketplace? Are the security mechanisms for distributed object managementsystems sufficient? How can we provide fine-grained access control? How can UML be used to designsecure applications?Secure Data Warehousing: There are many challenges here. How can we build a secure warehouse fromthe data sources? How can we develop an integrated security policy? What is the security impact on thefunctions of a warehouse?Secure Web Data and Information Management: There is a lot of work to be done on secure web dataand information management. For example, how can we build secure web database systems? What are thesecurity issues for digital libraries? How do we secure the semantic web? How can we maintain trust onthe web? How can we secure emerging applications such as knowledge management, multimedia,collaboration, e-commerce and peer-to-peer data management? Also securing the semantic web and webservices will be major research areas.Data Mining, Security and Privacy: Without a doubt, data mining has many applications in security.However, privacy is a major concern. We need better techniques for detecting novel classes. Furthermore,we need to detect the malware before they change patterns. Privacy research includes privacy-preservingdata mining, building privacy controllers and analyzing the complexity of the privacy problem. Privacy isa multidisciplinary research topic between computer scientists and social scientists.Assured Information Sharing: The 9/11 commission report has stated that we have to migrate from aneed to know to a need to share environment. We need appropriate policy management techniques forsharing data. More importantly, we need incentives for data sharing. This is a multidisciplinary researcharea between computer scientists and social scientists.111