Era Vuksani

Era Vuksani is an associate staff member in the Cyber Operations and Analysis Technology Group. She joined the Laboratory in 2011 and currently leads multiple projects in the intersections of cyber/network security, machine learning, and software engineering towards defensive countermeasures. 

Currently, Vuksani is responsible for developing novel and impactful technologies in mission-critical and cyber security areas. She was the lead developer and implementer of the Zero Trust Architecture Trust Engine. She has been applying threat-understanding, situational awareness, and decision-making components to different sponsor areas, including aircraft vulnerability research and logistics. 

Previously, she has developed and implemented novel solutions for cyber modeling and simulation of attackers, defenders, and missions; moving target analytics; metrics about attacker and defender actions and strategies (Lincoln Risk (LR) metrics); situational awareness and cyber operations applications; and forensic cyber analysis of terrorist activities in the FTTU multi-division project. Her interests include network security, packet analytics, software engineering, big data analysis, attacker/defender strategies, password research, simulation work in different fields, and teaching computer security via interactive media.

She is leading research on DNS and network packet analytics and volunteering as a Technical Director with multiple student teams on the INSuRE program, teaching students how to perform research and hands-on applications in network security. Vuksani is also heading the MIT Lincoln Laboratory group of INSuRE Technical Directors. Furthermore, she is mentoring multiple SMEs at the Laboratory and enjoys advising the next set of cyber security engineers and researchers. 

Vuksani was a 2019 RSA Conference Scholar with her research H4kRT0yz: Hacking Home IoT Devices. 

Vuksani holds a BA degree with honors in computer science from Wellesley College (2012). Her undergraduate honors' thesis, Device Dash: Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating an Educational Computer Security Game, is on teaching about attackers and defenders on computer networks, based on the SANS Top 20 Critical Controls, and was done in conjunction with Lincoln Laboratory. She holds an MS degree in information security from Carnegie Mellon University (2019) with a focus in network security.