At The Boundary
“At the Boundary” is going to feature global and national strategy insights that we think our fans will want to know about. That could mean live interviews, engagements with distinguished thought leaders, conference highlights, and more. It will pull in a broad array of government, industry, and academic partners, ensuring we don’t produce a dull uniformity of ideas. It will also be a platform to showcase all the great things going on with GNSI, our partners, and USF.
At The Boundary
Cybersecurity Without Borders: USA and France
Text the ATB Team! We'd love to hear from you!
In this episode of At the Boundary, Dr. Nicolas Sabouret of the University of Paris-Saclay joins GNSI’s Dr. Tad Schnaufer to preview the upcoming Transatlantic Forum on Cybersecurity. Together, they explore how France and the U.S. approach cybersecurity—from technical expertise in cryptography and networks to the policy implications of securing national infrastructure. It’s a candid, international look at cybersecurity education, research, and collaboration. Whether you’re a student, policymaker, or tech enthusiast, you’ll find insights on the future of global cyber strategy.
Episode Links:
Webpage and Registration for The Transatlantic Forum on Cybersecurity
GNSI Video Series: Dr. Golfo Alexopoulos with Peter Pomerantsev
GNSI Video Series: Dr. Matthew Ford with Students from FSP
####
At the Boundary from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida, features global and national security issues we’ve found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about.
A "boundary" is a place, either literal or figurative, where two forces exist in close proximity to each other. Sometimes that boundary is in a state of harmony. More often than not, that boundary has a bit of chaos baked in. The Global and National Security Institute will live on the boundary of security policy and technology and that's where this podcast will focus.
The mission of GNSI is to provide actionable solutions to 21st-century security challenges for decision-makers at the local, state, national and global levels. We hope you enjoy At the Boundary.
Look for our other publications and products on our website publications page.
Glenn, Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of at the boundary, the podcast from the global and national security Institute at the University of South Florida. I'm Glenn Beckman, communications manager at GNSI, and your host for today's at the boundary.
Tad Schnaufer:Nick Well, thank you for that wonderful introduction. Nicholas, welcome to the podcast.
Unknown:Thank you. Thank you. Nice to meet you.
Nicolas Sabouret:I'm Nicholas Sabouret. I'm the director of the Graduate School of Computer Science here in Paris Saclay University, and I'm very happy to be part of today's podcast. Thank you, Nicholas, and we're talking today about our current partnership between GNSI, the University of South Florida, as well as the University of Paris Saclay and our upcoming event in a couple of weeks. But first, why don't we talk about what the overall Paris Saclay University looks like, and as well as your computer science department, science department there Nicholas, okay, Paris circle is one of the largest university in Europe. Well, compared to US standards, it might look like a regular university, but to us, it is a large university with roughly 50,000 students, from undergrads to.
Unknown:Two PhD students in all fields of science with a big focus on, you know, science and engineering and life sciences, the computer science department is one of the 17 graduate schools we have here. Just to give you an ideas in terms of numbers, we have roughly 1000 master students here and in computer science, I mean, and roughly 500 PhD students in our 22 research centers in Paris, actually, just to give you an overview of the activity in computer science, and it ranges from low level architecture questions in computer science to high level like aI Human Computer Interaction research, with theoretical computer science, with Applied Computer Science. So we really cover all aspects of computer science in our teaching and research, that's the goal of the university here. Oh,
Tad Schnaufer:excellent. So with your department, where do many of your students end up going after they graduate? Like, what's what career fields are they focused on? Within computer science, they work for the government, the military, or just, you know, industry,
Unknown:okay, I would say that 80% of all students, once they graduate their master studies, they go in the industry, most of them, really, I would say 80% is a good number. The 20 remaining percent, some work for the government. Some prepare a PhD to this, and once they graduate from the PhD, again, it's roughly 50% who goes in the industry, and only the remaining 50% who work for for labs and research centers in in France or in Europe or in the US. It's
Tad Schnaufer:interesting. Yeah, do most your students stay in Europe?
Unknown:Lots of our students do stay in Europe? Yes, we have the chance to have a wide ecosystem of both companies and research centers and places where you can develop your activity, also here in Europe, same as in the USA, actually. So it's quite easy for people to find the job and the themes they want to work on here, but lots of our students also try to go to the US for short for short stays, or for longer ones.
Tad Schnaufer:Well, there is always the attraction of computer science in the US, which is, I mean, you're a country in which this is a very, very active field. But well, you know how it is people like to stay where they where they were born and was a studied. So lots of our students stay here. No, of course, makes perfect sense. And so what brought about the partnership with the University of South Florida? Because obviously you came over here and visited us, you know, several months ago. So how'd that partnership begin? Where did you find out about us, and how did that work?
Nicolas Sabouret:That's exactly how it began. I just came to University of South Florida to visit you and discover your activities. And it is true that a university such as yours has very similar aspects compared to Paris acclaim University the goal of welcoming all students in the area to try to make them do the best with their potential, and if possible, go to the PhD. So we I found that there are very close relationships that were possible between between the two universities. And when I met GNSI, it struck me that you had this research center on global and national security that was something very predisciplinar,
Unknown:with a very specific team that we were not working on that much in Paris. Saclay. We do have researchers in cybersecurity, many of them, and you're going to meet some of them and in a couple of weeks. But for having this approach, which is a general approach, combining different disciplines on security, is something that we did not have in satellite, and we do not have in satellite for now. So I thought that we could benefit from your experience, if we could share and exchange our knowledge, respective knowledge on computer science for outside and in other aspects of science, but for GSI.
Tad Schnaufer:No, that's great. And like you mentioned, do you have any courses or anything that focus on national security in your department now? Or is this kind of a new development as you're looking at this broader spectrum?
Unknown:So we don't have specific courses in computer science about national security. We do have two tracks and one specific track, which is really focused on cryptography, the other being focused on network security in general. And they have a very technical approach to these questions, and they do not take a view of national security and global security, such as what you can do here at J. Si especially, they have very few courses in other fields than computer science, so they're really focused on the technical aspects of cybersecurity. And that's why I think it is very interesting for researchers to see how things are going on the other side of the Atlantic. Yeah,
Tad Schnaufer:it's a great perspective to be able to see what our allies are doing across the ocean, but as well as, again, from our side of GNSI, and also with our partnership with cyber Florida, a lot of the policy pieces, so less of the technical piece. But what does that actually mean for policy makers? I don't know. Do you have any engagement with French policy makers at all?
Unknown:Okay, I personally don't have them. I mean, the graduate school don't have specific engagements on national security with policy makers, although we are in relations with them when they want to address the specific questions with the universities. They, of course, contact us and we try to relay, rely, sorry, to realize information in our teams here at University of Paris, actually, but some of the speakers for next week, or for the couple of weeks, do have contacts with policy makers and with active representatives for the government. So these questions, yes,
Tad Schnaufer:sure, and then does the Okay. It goes beyond that. Goes
Unknown:way beyond the sorry for interrupting that goes beyond sorry the attributions of the graduate school to have those contacts. We really try to make our labs, our research centers, work with the government directly, not through us, because it's more efficient today. I mean, it's a part of it,
Tad Schnaufer:right? You guys are really focused on the research piece and the technical aspects Exactly, exactly. Now. Does it also? Do you have any courses that also talk about when you talk about cybersecurity, but also like the criminal aspect of it, or possible the nefarious actors aspect of computer science, or the bad side of it, if a bad actor was using it?
Unknown:Well, it's not a specific course on it, but it's true that in all different
Nicolas Sabouret:modules, so our teachers try to give concrete examples to the students, and in which of course, they speak of all aspects of cyber security. But we do not have specific courses with such content. Do you have such such content here in GNSI?
Tad Schnaufer:So GNSI ourselves, we don't host courses, but through our partnership with the cyber Florida, as well as the School of Information here at USF, we do have some courses on that. Our criminology department actually has some cybersecurity courses that look at the criminal aspect of online security, so making sure you have strong passwords, those type of things, but also what they can do to hack whether if it's a banking website or a government website, and then our College of Engineering and our new college, the Bellini College of AI, will also have some aspects of the computer science security piece. So we actually, yeah, so we have a very expansive technical piece,
Nicolas Sabouret:yeah, that is very interesting, and that's the sort of thing I would love to develop here at basically interdisciplinary approach to security, yeah. So we have it across the disciplines here. And again, it's a and it's great to also have it have that other international perspective as well. That's the great thing about the this partnership.
Tad Schnaufer:In addition, as we start looking at our event in a couple weeks, what are some of the big things you think will take away from that? So when we talk in two weeks or so, from my side, what I really expect to take away from from this meeting is new look, new approaches to security that is less technical. I mean, technique centered
Unknown:different researchers in different disciplines that are not taught in our masters here, so that's what I hope my colleagues in security here will be able to take away from this meeting.
Tad Schnaufer:That's also what I hope our students will see, that they will be able to discover that beyond what they were taught in their courses, there is an approach to security that is wider than just a computer science approach that they know of because we see within security, computer science is becoming almost omnipresent. It's everywhere. So whether you're talking about energy, energy infrastructure, trade, I mean, there's obviously computers involved in all of that, but if you're able to somehow attack a computer system, you can really shut down a lot of a nation's operations, whether if it's infrastructure or trade.
Nicolas Sabouret:Yes, I agree, and that's why I hope the people on your side will maybetake away from the discussions that there is an expertise also here in Europe, in.
Tad Schnaufer:In cyber security, with with the, as you say, the broad approach to cyber security, which means that any computer system needs to be protected and in some way that maybe might, might be useful in terms of exchange of practices between the two countries, which I'm sure are different approaches to cyber security, absolutely, we're definitely looking to see about that different approaches. And again, Mary marrying up our technical experts here at the University of South Florida, as well as the
Unknown:If you could, Nicholas, would you highlight a couple of the speakers that we have coming in from Paris to clay in a couple weeks? Just any the few that you'd like to highlight, we have, obviously, a number of great speakers, but I don't know if there's one or two you'd like to highlight.
Nicolas Sabouret:From Paris a clay I would like to highlight at least one speaker who is
Unknown:to propose dependability methods that can be used for security and cyber security in the police systems. So I think that's very interesting in terms of experience for for the approach we have on global and national security here. Oh,
Tad Schnaufer:Oh, that's going to be an excellent contribution to the discussion, undoubtedly. So let's just talk briefly about each of the panels, what they're going to what the topics, in general, they're going to talk about, letting our audience know so they can, you know, again, get a little bit of a insight on what we can expect in a couple weeks. So panel one is going to talk about formal models, formal computer security models. So what's that going to discussion going to look like? Well,
Nicolas Sabouret:Well, when you design a computer system, conditional expressions that need to be checked. And then we use automatic methods to prove that the system will reach a stable state and will not fail in face of such an attack. So for that, we use formal method, and that's that's why the first panel is about formal methods for security.
Tad Schnaufer:Well, that sounds awesome, and it kind of builds out to the next panel, which is on network security, because you talk about the formal methods within the computer system, but then you also have the networks that connects all these different systems, right? So what's that
Unknown:second panel looking at?
Nicolas Sabouret:Yes, the second panel is about network security. So it is a well known fact that the security and one of the main security failure in systems is not the system itself, but the communication between the different systems that is an entry point for for hikers or para and so it is very important that the network system also is secure, that the communication remains private and cannot be altered and cannot be entered through, can be used as an entry point to the system. So all these questions of making the system communicate properly and still being secured and sound and safe.
Tad Schnaufer:That's part of the network security that is one of our theme for the conference. Does this include a zero trust architecture?
Nicolas Sabouret:I'm not sure it's going to be discussed at the panel, but it could include, yes, those situations, yeah, okay, because we see a lot of that in the security sphere about being able to build out that type of network or architecture. And then lastly, oh, go ahead. Oh, sorry, sorry, it is very important that network security becomes accessible to people who have no experience in computer programming itself. So that's why this. Such approaches are very important.
Tad Schnaufer:Now, yes, absolutely, I'm sure. I'm sure it will come up in some in some aspects. And then lastly, our third panel, as you had already mentioned, is going to touch on. Okay, so we have these great technical discussions. So how do you actually implement those and actually have policy, have that policy implemented. So what can we look at for that third panel?
Unknown:Well, I think what we should expect from the sub panel is interesting experience from people who went from the technical aspects to the policy makers and tried to have the theoretical computer science models be actually implemented in practices, in systems and in real situations, and Then you face a difficulty that is often unexpected by researchers and engineers in engineering sciences, which is that you can see you designed a very, very precise model that should work in all situations, and then the users arrive, and then it doesn't work as it was supposed to so that's the confrontation between all things that we teach in our courses and all the practical tools that people design, and how it comes to reality when you try to have it work in real situations. And that's going to be a very good experience, I think, to to hear off, sure. And also this technology is expanding and developing so rapidly, it's almost hard to keep pace. You develop a program, you implement it. By the time you implement it, there's already a new level of coding or technology that's already come out.
Tad Schnaufer:So how do you get ahead of it?
Nicolas Sabouret:I think you don't. I think you keep running after the brain, which is going faster and faster. and people are running after that. And the next step, I don't know which one it will be, but it's sure there will be a next step in a few, in a couple of years.
Tad Schnaufer:Well, undoubtedly, computer science is certainly not a boring subject. There's constant evolutions. I don't know if you have any other comments you'd like to mention before we sign off here today.
Nicolas Sabouret:No, I'm very happy that you invited me, and I'm very happy that you helped us organize this great event, and I invite everybody to participate and listen to the very interesting discussions that will be
Unknown:on June the 23rd if I'm correct, that's correct, yeah.
Tad Schnaufer:So we're looking forward to having everyone tune into that conference, our Virtual Conference, the Trans Atlantic forum on cybersecurity. So looking forward to it. Thank you so much. Nicholas.
Glenn Beckmann:You What a great discussion today between Dr Nicholas sabaray, the director of the Graduate School of Computer Science at the University of Paris at clay, and Dr Tad schnaufer, strategy and research manager here at GNSI, we're working with Dr sabares team, along with our colleagues at cyber Florida, to present the Trans Atlantic forum on cybersecurity on June 23 registration is open for the live stream event, so check it out on next week's episode of at the boundary, our guest will be Dr Mark Luther, an associate professor of physical oceanography here at the USF College of Marine Science, where he's The director of the ocean monitoring and prediction lab. He's also heavily involved around the world in research involving deep sea mining and deep sea critical minerals and resources, and that's what we'll be talking with him about next week. Thanks for listening today. If you like the podcast, please subscribe and let your friends and colleagues know about it. If you're listening and watching this on our YouTube channel, and we know some of you are, we invite you to try us out on your favorite podcast platform. We're on Apple podcast, Spotify, overcast, all the major players. That way you can take at the boundary with you all the time. Also be sure to check us out on our social. Officials. We're currently on LinkedIn, X and YouTube. We'd appreciate a like, follow or subscribe while you're there. That's going to wrap up this episode of at the boundary. Each new episode will feature global and national security issues we found to be worthy of attention and discussion. I'm Glenn Beckman, thanks for listening today. We'll see you next week at the boundary. You.
