2023 Spring Writers Award

Chola Chhetri
PhD, MS, MSc
CISSP, CEH, CCSK, Security+, Network+

Email: cchhetri [at] gmu [dot] edu
Research interests: Usable privacy and security, Internet of Things, smart home technologies, and human-computer interaction.




Bio

Dr. Chhetri is a Professor of Information and Engineering Technologies at NVCC. He holds a Ph.D. in Information Technology with a concentration in Information Security from the College of Engineering and Computing at George Mason University . He holds an MS in ISA from George Mason University and an MS in Computer Science. His research focuses on eliciting privacy concerns of users and non-users of smart home devices, and designing user-centric privacy control solutions for smart home technology. His research lies at the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI), security, and privacy. He has authored publications in premier academic venues across HCI, usable security and privacy, and education (e.g. PACMHCI, CSCW, ACM SIGITE, iCONF, HAISA, HFES, NCS, AHFE). His research has been supported by NSF, GMU, VCCS, 4VA and CCI.

Dr. Chhetri holds industry certifications, including ISC2’s CISSP, EC Council’s CEH, Cloud Security Alliance’s CCSK, and CompTIA’s Security+ and Network+. He has worked in academia, government, and non-profit sectors globally in areas of network management, network administration, and system administration. He has taught cybersecurity, networks, computer architecture, and computer science at undergraduate and graduate levels. He has developed cybersecurity curriculum and investigated effective cybersecurity pedagogical methods for online, hybrid, and in-person instruction.


Recent Activities

Dec 2022
Paper accepted by Information and Computer Security journal for publication.
July 2022
Presented our paper "Privacy Concerns about Smart Home Devices: A Comparative Analysis between Non-Users and Users" at AHFE'22.
July 2022
Presented our paper "Designing and Evaluating a Prototype for Data-related Privacy Controls in a Smart Home" at HAISA'22.
May 2022
Paper accepted at HAISA'22 for publication.
May 2022
Paper accepted at HFES'22 for publication.
May 2022
Paper accepted at AHFE22 for publication.
Apr 2022
Manuscript submitted to HAISA'22.
Feb 2022
Paper accepted at CSCW22 for publication in ACM Journal PACM HCI.
June 2020
Presented our paper "Identifying Vulnerabilities in Security and Privacy of Smart Home Devices" at NCS 2020.
Nov 2019
Participated in Doctoral Consortium at CSCW 2019.
Participated in Networked Privacy Workshop at CSCW 2019.
Apr 2019
Presented smart home privacy concerns paper at iConference 2019.
Presented a paper on analysis of privacy concerns of smart home device owners and non-owners at GMU MaGIC Conference 2019.
Mar 2019
Participated in Doctoral Colloquium at iConference 2019.
Feb 2019
Gave a talk at Engineering Youth Conference, GMU.
Shared IST table to discuss smart home privacy research work with undergrad community during Engineering Week at GMU



Research Projects


Security and
Privacy Concerns
in IoT


We study privacy concerns of users and non-users of smart home technologies. We proved that both users and non-users are concerned about privacy, proposed guidelines, and are working on a framework for usable privacy in the smart home .


Security
Analyses


We analyze security vulnerabilities in smart home devices by reverse engineering, traffic analysis, and other validated techniques.


Cybersecurity
Education


We study the challenges and opportunities of pedagogical approaches and innovative ways of providing cybersecurity education to the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.



Selected Publications

For full and updated publication list, visit Google Scholar or DBLP.

J02

Enhancing the Design of Data-Related Privacy Controls for Smart Home Devices ICS22

Chola Chhetri, Vivian Motti
Information and Computer Security, Emerald Publishing 2022

Purpose: Past research shows that users of smart home devices have privacy concerns. These concerns have been validated from technical re- search that shows smart home devices introduce a lot of privacy risks. However, there is limited research in addressing these concerns and risks. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, we follow a user- centered design approach to design data-related privacy controls from de- sign requirements backed by literature. We test the design for usability and perceived information control using psychometrically validated scales. For this purpose, we created two variations of the prototype (My- Cam1 with a listing of data-related privacy controls and MyCam2 with three privacy presets) and tested them in a between-subjects experimental setting. Study participants (n=207) were recruited via Mechanical Turk and asked to use the prototype app. An online survey was distributed to the participants to measure some usability and privacy-related constructs. Findings: Findings show that the presented prototype design were usable and met the privacy control needs of users. The prototype design with privacy presets was found to be significantly more usable than the list of privacy controls. Originality: The findings of this article are original and build on the findings presented in our HAISA paper. This paper contributes better and usable designs of privacy controls for smart home applications.
@article{chhetri2022enhancing, author = {Chhetri, Chola and Motti, Vivian G.}, title = {User Centric Privacy Controls for Smart Home}, year = {2022}, issue_date = {Mar 2023}, publisher = {Emerald Publishing}, address = {UK}, volume = {31}, number = {EarlyCite}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1108/ICS-11-2022-0173}, doi = {10.1108/ICS-11-2022-0173}, journal = {Information and Computer Security}, month = {Mar}, articleno = {}, numpages = {20}, keywords = {} }
J01

User-Centric Privacy Controls for the Smart Home CSCW22

Chola Chhetri, Vivian Motti
PACMHCI-Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, CSCW 2022

The widespread adoption of smart home devices (SHD) has increased privacy concerns among users, yet user-friendly controls are lacking. While there is a large body of research focused on understanding privacy concerns and threat models of SHD users, there is limited research so far aimed at informing the development of privacy controls in SHDs. This paper presents the results of 25 interviews focused on characterizing the users’ needs for privacy controls. Through qualitative analysis of interview data, we present 7 design factors and 32 sub-factors for the design of privacy controls in SHDs. The interview findings informed the design of a survey that was deployed to 440 adult SHD users to gain quantitative insights on privacy control requirements and to complement the interview findings. Based on the findings, we discuss a privacy control framework that guides designers towards user-centric privacy controls.
@article{chhetri2022user, author = {Chhetri, Chola and Motti, Vivian G.}, title = {User Centric Privacy Controls for Smart Home}, year = {2022}, issue_date = {June 2022}, publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, volume = {6}, number = {CSCW2}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3555769}, doi = {10.1145/3555769}, journal = {Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact.}, month = {November}, articleno = {349}, numpages = {36}, keywords = {} }

More Publications...


Invited Talks

Jun 2020
Identifying Vulnerabilities in Security and Privacy of Smart Home Devices, National Cyber Summit
Jun 2020
TWOPD: A Novel Approach to Teaching an Introductory Cybersecurity Course, National Cyber Summit
Feb 2019
Smart Home Technologies: Privacy Concerns, Engineering Young Conference, George Mason University
Feb 2018
Smart Home Technologies: Benefits and Concerns, Engineering Young Conference, George Mason University

Awards

Mar 2022
NCFDD Daily Writer's Award
Feb 2021
EC-Council CEH Hall of Fame Finalist
Apr 2016
NVCC Faculty of the Year



Teaching

I care about my students and I enjoy helping them achieve their academic endeavors.

ITN 261
Computer Attacks and Defense
ITN 260
Network Security Basics
ITN 100
Intro to Telecommunications
ITE 221
PC Hardware and OS Architecture
ITE 152
Introduction to Digital and Information Literacy and Computer Applications
ITE 119
Information Literacy
ITE 115
Intro to Computer Applications
SDV 101
Orientation to Information Technology
CompTIA
Security+
CompTIA
Network+



Professional Service