File:Privacy and security in a connected age.jpg

English: In October--National Cyber Security Awareness Month-- the National Science Foundation (NSF) and IEEE-USA joined with the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives to present a briefing on Capitol Hill on “Privacy and Cybersecurity in a Connected Age.” It featured three leading scientists and recipients of NSF support discussing fundamental research on the nature of cybersecurity threats, and new, innovative ways of combating vulnerabilities that threaten everyone’s security and privacy. Lorrie Faith Cranor (left), professor of computer science and engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, talked about the need to be proactive in protecting privacy. With support from NSF, she leads a team working to make web privacy policies easier to understand. Her team also analyzes millions of passwords, testing how vulnerable they are. Cranor wore a dress she designed featuring a “word cloud” inspired by the 1,000 most common passwords in a data set of 32 million passwords stolen from a social gaming website and made public in 2009.