The Alumni Magazine for Worcester Polytechnic Institute. (WPI)
Issue link: http://wpialumnimag.epubxp.com/i/456562
34 Winter 2015 1101010111110000000000001011000000111100011101010111110 0000000000010110000001111000111010101010110100101100000 0111100011101010111110000000000001011000000111100011101 010111110000000000v001011000000111100011101010111110111 0101011111000000000000101100000011110001110101011111000 0000000001011000000111100011101010111110000000000001011 0000001111000111010101010110100101100000011110001110101 0111110000000000001011000000111100011101010111110000000 000v001011000000110101100000011110001110101011111000100 000000001000001011 000101110000000111 IT TO , Anup Ghosh's father, a chemistry professor and university administrator, was one of the earliest adopters. "We had computers since I was 7 years old," Ghosh says. "My dad used to bring home these really early ones, the kind that actually had a tape recorder to run a program. You would load them in this tape recorder, and it would load very slowly." For Ghosh and his older brother—typical, if somewhat geeky, kids—a major appeal of those early machines was that they could be used to play video games. At frst, the cassettes the boys ordered in the mail each month held primitive text adventures, but by the 1980s, they and their friends were trading copies of Oregon Trail and Castle Wolfenstein on 5 1 / 4 -inch foppy disks. That was not without its risks, however. "Everyone was worried about transmitting viruses via these disk drives," Ghosh says. "The antivirus industry was born out of that. And we're still running that same software." Ghosh, now 45, shakes his head as he thinks back to that more innocent time, when personal computers were still just a geeky hobby, and malware the province of practical jokers rather than criminal syndicates. Although the digital world has changed dra- matically, the tools we use to keep our computers safe have not. Traditional antivirus software, Ghosh explains, works the same way vaccines protect us from biological pathogens. The big cybersecurity companies distribute the signatures of the lat- est set of known viruses to computers that run their software so that uninfected machines can guard against attacks. "It was a good idea until the 2000s," Ghosh says, "when the virus writers said, 'Oh, well, I can change the signature crypti- cally and automate that entire process and now you can't keep up with all my new signatures.' Now, if you talk to any security professional, they tell you antivirus doesn't work." It's a warning that Ghosh is eager to share with the public, and a problem he has been working on for more than a decade, including as a scientist at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and as a research professor at George Mason University's Center for Secure Information Systems. In 2009 Ghosh founded a cybersecurity company called Invincea, which, he believes, fnally offers a solution. "We've been running more or less the same technology for about 25 years," he says, as if that fact still shocks him. "Invincea aims to change that." Invincea's headquarters shares an otherwise unassuming low-rise offce building in downtown Fairfax, Va., with law and accounting frms, but in contrast with the buttoned-up style of the Washington suburbs, the atmosphere here is Silicon Valley casual. Ghosh, who favors jeans and an oxford shirt (dressed up with a blazer when he's making a presentation or appearing as a cybersecurity expert on MSNBC or CNN), encourages employ- ees to make themselves at home. A game room with a foosball table, Xbox, dartboard, and mini-fridge full of Red Bulls gives the young coders a chance to blow off stress, and regular grocery deliveries ensure that fuel is always close at hand. "The key is to keep the developers fed—if you keep them fed, they keep working," Ghosh says, only half-joking, as he inspects the offce kitchen. "And, of course, the other part is the caffeine, so we keep this cabinet stocked with Keurig cups and endless sodas." It's not all feverish coding; Ghosh has recently taken his team on a retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains and to Puerto Rico to celebrate a software release. "We have lots of extracurricular activities," says engineering manager Shaun Morber, who has worked at Invincea for two years and appreciates the sense of community he has found there. "There are no closed doors," he says, adding that he's comfortable dropping by Ghosh's offce anytime. "It's really great that I can just talk to him. And it's a really wonderful place to work—we look for the brightest people, and we all have the same goal of becoming a better company." Invincea's employees, who now number about 100, are work- ing hard to keep pace with demand from businesses and the gov- ernment for their novel approach to fghting viruses and other malware. "Today you have over 300,000 new variants of malware released every day," Ghosh says, explaining what the frm's cor- porate clients are up against. Malware is usually transmitted through hyperlinks posted on social media or emailed directly to victims, as well as through email attachments. At a company with several hundred or even thousands of employees, chances are good that at least one per- son will click on a malicious link or open an attachment that contains a virus or other dangerous program. It's impossible to stop people from ill-advised clicks, Ghosh says, especially since email and social media have become integral to people's jobs, but once malware is on a company's network, system-wide infec- tion can be diffcult to prevent. Invincea's solution, Ghosh says, is similar to the way automakers deal with the inevitability of car accidents. "They say, 'We're going to make this vehicle resilient so that you can survive a crash,'" Ghosh explains. "Crashes happen. So they built in crumple zones and airbags, anti-lock braking, seat belts, and so on. All of that is a way of providing the right equipment for the users when they're doing an inherently