Two talks on Security Challenges for Immersive Technologies

The International Cybersecurity Center of Excellence will host two online talks via zoom on Security Challenges for Immersive Technologies from 7-8:30am EDT on Thursday, October 9.

Enhancing Security and Privacy in Augmented Reality - Through the Lens of Eye Tracking

Augmented Reality (AR) devices distinguish themselves from other mobile devices by providing an immersive and interactive experience. The ability of these devices to collect information presents challenges and opportunities to improve existing securityp and privacy techniques in this domain. In this talk, I will discuss how readily available eye-tracking sensor data can be used to improve existing methods for assuring security and protecting the privacy of those near the device. Our research has presented three new systems, BystandAR, ShouldAR, and GazePair, leveraging the user's eye gaze to improve security and privacy expectations in or with AR. As these devices grow in power and number, such solutions are necessary to prevent perception and privacy failures that hindered earlier devices. This work is presented in the hope that these solutions can improve and expedite the adoption of these powerful and useful AR devices.

Bo Ji is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and a College of Engineering Faculty Fellow at Virginia Tech. His research interests include interdisciplinary intersections of computing and networking systems, artificial intelligence and machine learning, security and privacy, and extended reality. More information about his research can be found here: https://people.cs.vt.edu/boji.

Queen’s University Belfast completed a two-phase Metaverse technologies horizonscanning project in July 2023 and 2025. This talk will cover a summary of the most relevant findings and outcomes. In the first phase, we presented a broad landscaping report of UK interests and activity in related technical areas. Building on areas where the UK might benefit from the emerging Metaverse, the second phase, deepen int analysis in three main areas: a) interoperability an standards: where we highlighted current metaverse standards development organisations and identified the strategic aims of such participation; b) privacy, security and regulations: investigating two complementary aspects: (1) the evolving regulatory and legal landscape related to data collection by metaverse service operators; (2) a thread analysis of the metaverse and a technical analysis of the privacy preserving technologies that could enable metaverse data platforms ; c) a horizon-scanning of Distributed Ledger Technology [DLT] and their application to the Metaverse.

Jesus Martinez-del-Rincon is a Professor in Secure and Trustworthy AI at the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Computer Science, Queens University Belfast (QUB). He leads the Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT)’s Secure Intelligence (SI) group.