CV

Education

• M.S. in Electrical Engineering, University of Texas at San Antonio, 2016
• Ph.D in Physics, University of Texas at San Antonio, 2011-2012 (Course Work Complete - Degree Incomplete)
• M.S. in Physics, Clarkson University, 2009
• B.S. in Physics, Clarkson University, 2007

Certificates

• 5-course DeepLearning.AI Deep Learning Specialization

Patents

• Dynamic Groups and Attribute-Based Access Control for Next-Generation Smart Cars

Work experience

• UTSA, Assistant Director for Cloud Security and Privacy Research, 02/2023 - Present
  • Complete overhaul of infrastructure for CSPECC Phase 2 grant
  • Creation and development of software to assist students research
• UTSA, Technology Research Analyst 2
  • Assisted with Ph.D. research implementation culminating in the graduation of 4 students:
    • Mehrnoosh Shakarami
    • Safwa Ameer
    • Asma Alshehri
    • Maanak Gupta
  • Awarded patent: Dynamic Groups and Attribute-Based Access Control for Next-Generation Smart Cars.
  • Created OSIAS, OpenStack Infrastructure As a Service, project for a rapid, highly biased, OpenStack deployment tool on bare metal.
• UTSA, Technology Research Analyst
  • Work with development and management of cloud computing systems and HPC (High Performance Computing) systems deployed at the Institute for Cyber Security.
  • Tracked the development of various Cloud Computing Research projects and reported progress to management.
  • Provided a continual level of experimental research in the fields of HPC and Cloud Computing.
  • Supported ICS computing facilities including OS and Cloud Computing applications.
  • Provide high availability of data analytics platform, data security, flexibility of being able to use multiple data analytics tools (HortonWorks, Rstudio, Apache Spark etc) with a preference towards open source technology.

Technical Skills

• Languages: Python, C++, Bash
• Tools: Git, Ansible

Soft skills

• Rapidly adopting new technologies and tools
• Rapid and agile task switching
• English: Native; German: CEFR A2/B1

Publications

Environment Aware Deep Learning Based Access Control Model

Pankaj Chhetri, Smriti Bhatt, Paras Bhatt, Mohammad Nur Nobi, James Benson, and Ram Krishnan. 2024. Environment Aware Deep Learning Based Access Control Model. In Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Workshop on Secure and Trustworthy Cyber-Physical Systems (SaT-CPS 24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 81–89. https://doi.org/10.1145/3643650.3659105

Dynamic groups and attribute-based access control for next-generation smart cars

Gupta, Maanak and Benson, James and Patwa, Farhan and Sandhu, Ravinderpal. 2024. Dynamic groups and attribute-based access control for next-generation smart cars. US Patent US11858517B2, filed Mar 06, 2020, and issued Jan 02, 2024.

Scenario-Driven Device-to-Device Access Control in Smart Home IoT

M. Shakarami, J. Benson and R. Sandhu, "Scenario-Driven Device-to-Device Access Control in Smart Home IoT," 2022 IEEE 4th International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Intelligent Systems, and Applications (TPS-ISA), Atlanta, GA, USA, 2022, pp. 217-228, doi: 10.1109/TPS-ISA56441.2022.00035.

Hybrid Approaches (ABAC and RBAC) Toward Secure Access Control in Smart Home IoT

S. Ameer, J. Benson and R. Sandhu, "Hybrid Approaches (ABAC and RBAC) Toward Secure Access Control in Smart Home IoT," in IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, vol. 20, no. 5, pp. 4032-4051, 1 Sept.-Oct. 2023, doi: 10.1109/TDSC.2022.3216297

Blockchain-Based Administration of Access in Smart Home IoT

Mehrnoosh Shakarami, James Benson, and Ravi Sandhu. 2022. Blockchain-Based Administration of Access in Smart Home IoT. In Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Workshop on Secure and Trustworthy Cyber-Physical Systems (Sat-CPS '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 57–66. https://doi.org/10.1145/3510547.3517921

Reachability Analysis for Attributes in ABAC With Group Hierarchy

M. Gupta, R. Sandhu, T. Mawla and J. Benson, "Reachability Analysis for Attributes in ABAC With Group Hierarchy," in IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 841-858, 1 Jan.-Feb. 2023, doi: 10.1109/TDSC.2022.3145358

An Attribute-Based Approach toward a Secured Smart-Home IoT Access Control and a Comparison with a Role-Based Approach

Ameer, S., Benson, J., & Sandhu, R. (2022). An Attribute-Based Approach toward a Secured Smart-Home IoT Access Control and a Comparison with a Role-Based Approach. Information (Basel), 13(2), 60-. https://doi.org/10.3390/info13020060

Edge Centric Secure Data Sharing with Digital Twins in Smart Ecosystems

G. Cathey, J. Benson, M. Gupta and R. Sandhu, "Edge Centric Secure Data Sharing with Digital Twins in Smart Ecosystems," 2021 Third IEEE International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Intelligent Systems and Applications (TPS-ISA), Atlanta, GA, USA, 2021, pp. 70-79, doi: 10.1109/TPSISA52974.2021.00008

Attribute-Based Access Control for AWS Internet of Things and Secure Industries of the Future

S. Bhatt, T. K. Pham, M. Gupta, J. Benson, J. Park and R. Sandhu, "Attribute-Based Access Control for AWS Internet of Things and Secure Industries of the Future," in IEEE Access, vol. 9, pp. 107200-107223, 2021, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3101218

Secure V2V and V2I Communication in Intelligent Transportation Using Cloudlets

M. Gupta, J. Benson, F. Patwa and R. Sandhu, "Secure V2V and V2I Communication in Intelligent Transportation Using Cloudlets," in IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 1912-1925, 1 July-Aug. 2022, doi: 10.1109/TSC.2020.3025993

An Attribute-Based Access Control for Cloud Enabled Industrial Smart Vehicles

M. Gupta, F. M. Awaysheh, J. Benson, M. Alazab, F. Patwa and R. Sandhu, "An Attribute-Based Access Control for Cloud Enabled Industrial Smart Vehicles," in IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 4288-4297, June 2021, doi: 10.1109/TII.2020.3022759

The EGRBAC Model for Smart Home IoT

S. Ameer, J. Benson and R. Sandhu, The EGRBAC Model for Smart Home IoT," 2020 IEEE 21st International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration for Data Science (IRI), Las Vegas, NV, USA, 2020, pp. 457-462, doi: 10.1109/IRI49571.2020.00076

Secure cloud assisted smart cars using dynamic groups and attribute based access control

Gupta, Maanak, James Benson, Farhan Patwa, and Ravi Sandhu. "Secure cloud assisted smart cars using dynamic groups and attribute based access control." arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.08112 (2019).

Dynamic Groups and Attribute-Based Access Control for Next-Generation Smart Cars

Maanak Gupta, James Benson, Farhan Patwa, and Ravi Sandhu. 2019. Dynamic Groups and Attribute-Based Access Control for Next-Generation Smart Cars. In Proceedings of the Ninth ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY 19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 61–72. https://doi.org/10.1145/3292006.3300048

Access Control Model for Virtual Objects (Shadows) Communication for AWS Internet of Things

Asma Alshehri, James Benson, Farhan Patwa, and Ravi Sandhu. 2018. Access Control Model for Virtual Objects (Shadows) Communication for AWS Internet of Things. In Proceedings of the Eighth ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY 18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 175–185. https://doi.org/10.1145/3176258.3176328

Multi-layer authorization framework for a representative Hadoop ecosystem deployment

Gupta, M., Benson, J., Patwa, F. and Sandhu, R., 2019. Secure cloud assisted smart cars using dynamic groups and attribute based access control. arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.08112.

Framework for developing automated infrastructure and software deployment for domain specific research

Benson, James. Framework for developing automated infrastructure and software deployment for domain specific research. The University of Texas at San Antonio, 2016.

Survey of automated software deployment for computational and engineering research

J. O. Benson, J. J. Prevost and P. Rad, "Survey of automated software deployment for computational and engineering research," 2016 Annual IEEE Systems Conference (SysCon), Orlando, FL, USA, 2016, pp. 1-6, doi: 10.1109/SYSCON.2016.7490666.

Towards understanding of shape formation mechanism of mesoporous silica particles

Volkov, Dmytro & Benson, James & Kievsky, Yaroslav & Sokolov, Igor. (2009). Towards understanding of shape formation mechanism of mesoporous silica particles. Phys Chem Chem Phys. 12. 341-4. 10.1039/b917424a.