Stevens Institute of Technology’s School of Business recently published an article on professor of industry Dr. Mahmoud Daneshmand’s pioneering research into data protection, on which he will deliver a keynote speech at this year’s IT Connect—New Jersey’s largest technology conference.
Daneshmand is “a highly visible face for the role of data in business intelligence” at Stevens, where graduate students learn “how to manipulate massive data sets to derive useful information.”
Daneshmand’s foray into the realm of cybersecurity began with a “$30 million data analytics research lab” to review and “better leverage” Bell Labs’ data back in 1995. Bell quickly realized it could put Daneshmand to work combating the “$200 million a year it lost to fraudulent callers.”
Dr. Daneshmand puts it simply: “Cybercrime is a bottom-line issue, because attacks on the network directly endanger a company’s ability to grow and function.”
He believes that the threat that cybercrime poses is drastically underestimated, especially in recent years. The article cites a PwC study, which explains that “90% of companies have been targeted” with each successful attacked valued at roughly $4 million on average.
Daneshmand believes decision-makers need to “directly engage their IT departments to better understand the threat cybercriminals pose” in the same way they might “in issues of marketing, finance, or strategy.”
Daneshmand’s work as “a leading researcher of the Internet of Things (IoT), which governs how connected devices communicate to provide real-time data and look for deviations from established patterns” has become highly sought-after “as a tool to battle cyberattacks.”
He elaborates: “The threat has to be addressed by the head of the company because they are in charge of performance and bottom line — and cybercrime can totally destroy their company.”