Dr. Lauren E. Provost is an Assistant Professor of Cybersecurity at Vermont State University (VTSU). Dr. Provost has an extensive background in protecting critical infrastructure and mission-critical systems from her history as an ethical hacker and computer scientist. Dr. Provost specifically focuses on formal methods which are techniques used to model complex systems as mathematical entities, ultimately aimed at preventing adversarial attacks. By building a mathematically rigorous model of a complex system, it is possible to verify the system’s properties in a more consistent and reliable manner ultimately enforcing correct system behavior. This perspective is enhanced by Provost’s experience as an ethical hacker and knowledge of adversarial approaches to attacking computing systems.
Additionally, Dr. Provost runs New England Ethical Hackers, a consulting organization that specializes in penetration testing, vulnerability assessment profiles, social engineering, strategic security assessments, security awareness training, expert testimony and more.
In the past, Provost worked as a Principal Investigator for Web Sensing, focusing on single-chip network security solutions leveraging System-On-Chip (SoC) and Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) Architectures through High-Level Synthesis (HLS) with defense community members and partners including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USDR&E). Provost also worked as a research lead with the formal methods research group at the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Provost is an active member of the National Security Agency’s Science of Security (SoS) initiative for the promotion of a foundational cybersecurity science that is needed to mature the cybersecurity discipline and to underpin advances in cyberdefense. A recent talk, Formal Treatments of Ethical Hacking to Improve Identification of Vulnerabilities in Complex Computing Environments, was presented at the NSA HoTSoS Hard Problems Adversaries Group on April 14, 2021 virtually. Dr. Provost is involved in multiple computer science initiatives nationally, including advising federal legislators current on cybersecurity breaches such as the most recent Solar Winds and Colonial Pipeline breaches. She has also participated in providing feedback for the NICE cybersecurity workforce framework from an equity lens and serves on the mentorship board for Women in Cybersecurity.
Provost’s upcoming talk involves her latest publication, “Case Studies of Ethical Hacking Integrating Artificial Intelligence: Building a Conceptual Framework for Research” to be presented at the International Association for Computer Information Systems in October of 2024.
