Small Firms Grapple With Roadblocks Caused by Shutdown

All UMBC Students, Faculty, Staff, and RAC Members:

PLEASE PARDON OUR PROGRESS WHILE WE RENOVATE THE RAC WEIGHT ROOM!

The
UMBC NCAA Division-I Athletics Program is allowing
students/faculty/staff and patrons of the RAC to utilize the Michael S.
Knapp Training Center on the RAC Arena Track level for the following
hours while renovations are completed in the Recreation Weight Room in
October:


Monday 9/30
8am-10am
2pm-3pm
8pm-10pm

Tuesday 10/1
8am-10:30am
11am-12pm
1pm-2pm
3pm-4pm
8pm-10pm

Wednesday 10/2
9am-10am
2pm-3pm
8pm-10pm

Thursday 10/3
8am-10:30am
11am-12pm
1pm-3pm
8pm-10pm

Friday 10/4
9am-10am
1pm-9pm

Saturday 10/5
1pm-7pm

Sunday 10/6
12pm-7pm

Thank you for your patience,

RAC Staff

W3C published today the final report of the Workshop on the Publishing and the Open Web Platform that was held 16-17 September 2013 in Paris. W3C thanks IRI for hosting the event, Intel and Adobe for their sponsorship, and INRIA for their support.

The W3C Workshop in Paris was the third in a series of industry consultation events held by W3C. The goal of this Workshop was first to identify difficulties faced by existing professional publishing organizations in using tools based on the Open Web platform, including the production of printed books, and second to find ways to work on eliminating or ameliorating those difficulties. We received approximately fifty statements of interest and position papers for the two-day event, and approximately sixty people attended the Workshop. Part of the workshop were panels around a selected subset of the submissions, part was organized as open discussions.

Many of the issues raised during the discussions will provide additional input to the work started by the W3C Digital Publishing Interest Group, collecting specific technical requirements of the publishing industry for the technologies of the Open Web Platform. Furthermore, it was felt that an additional activity on education and outreach may be necessary; indeed, one of the challenges of the Publishing Industry overall is to improve technical expertise in-house, also covering the new possibilities offered by the Open Web Platform (e.g., advanced CSS control for complex typography, or interactivity of electronic books provided by scripting), as well as the missing contacts the industry may have with Web Designers and Web Application Developers. It was also felt that W3C should continue to establish liaisons with various industry organizations in the area, and also to reach out to librarians and archivists to collaborate on, for example, the metadata issues of the publishing industry. We anticipate new actions in those areas in the months to come.

UMBC Center for Information Security and Assurance

Quantum Computing and Cybersecurity

John Seymour

Noon-1:00 Friday, 4 October 2013
Cyber Defense Lab, room 228 ITE, UMBC

This talk will be a brief introduction to the topic of quantum computing for the computer scientist interested in cybersecurity. It will begin with a light summary of the fundamental quantum algorithms and move to discuss the recent advances in quantum computing, including the D-Wave quantum optimizer, University of Bristol’s new quantum chip, quantum programming languages, and more. Finally, it will introduce some current research questions and projects residing in the intersection of quantum computing and cybersecurity.

John Seymour is a Ph.D. student in the UMBC computer science graduate program. As a UMBC undergraduate, he was a triple major — Computer Science, — Mathematics and Philosophy. He is currently working on three research projects: evaluation of a detection protocol for Man-in-the-Middle attacks, a web-based game for teaching students basic concepts of internet security, and integration of social media with internet voting to facilitate collaborative decision making.

Host: Dr. Alan T. Sherman, Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

Catonsville startup Light Point relishes national attention

Cyber security firm is among five contestants in a Wall Street Journal startup competition

Cyber startup Light Point Security is feeling the warmth of being in the spotlight.

Catonsville-based Light Point has made it to the top five contestants in a Wall Street Journal startup competition that attracted 500 applications. The company still has to make it through two more challenges to win, but already Light Point is experiencing the benefits of being a winner. Investors, potential clients and media have been flocking to Light Point.

“It elevates our name, company brand,” said Zuly Gonzalez, chief operating officer for Light Point. “It’s brought us more recognition, made us a more familiar name with people.”

Light Point, which launched in 2010, has developed a software product to protect computers from Web-based malware attacks. The software allows users to browse the Web from a virtual cloud, meaning any attacks go there, instead of users’ own computers. The company is based at bwtech@UMBC Research and Development Park.

“It’s nice,” she said. “It validates that we’re doing something right — we’ve got an interesting product, an interesting company.”

Light Point is not currently raising money, but will look to do an angel investing round next year. Getting to know investors now will be a leg up when it comes time to start raising next year, Gonzalez said.

The experience has also led Gonzalez and company CEO Beau Adkins to rethink their approach to building a customer base. The pair originally planned to reach out to potential customers directly. But through the startup contest, Light Point has realized that getting in with managed service providers — companies that handle IT operations for other businesses — could build their customer base more quickly. Those companies could provide Light Point’s software as a service to their entire network of clients.

The Wall Street Journal will narrow the remaining contenders to three in the next few weeks. A final winner will be announced Nov. 4. Light Point is one of 24 companies selected to participate.

The contest does not have a prize, other than bragging rights. But winning would be a huge vote of confidence from a publication the business community trusts — that would definitely be good for business, Gonzalez said.

“It would say a lot about the company,” Gonzalez said. “We could say, ‘We’re the most innovative and risk-taking company in the nation, according to the Wall Street Journal.’”