Dr. Watkins’ research presently encompasses the areas of critical infrastructure and network security. He is also developing expertise in the area of bio-inspired cybersecurity. He holds a PhD in computer science from Georgia State University where he was advised by Raheem Beyah, three MS degrees in biotechnology (Johns Hopkins University), computer science and physics (both from Clark Atlanta University), and a BS in physics (Clark Atlanta University).

Dr. Watkins is currently a principal professional staff member at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Prior to joining APL, he worked for over ten years in industry, first at the Ford Motor Company and then at AT&T, where he held roles such as systems engineer, network engineer, product development manager, and product manager.

He is married and has three children.

Below are highlights from his research and a list of his research areas and associated publications:

Lanier in the News

• April 2017: https://rising.jhu.edu/boston-cybersecurity
• June 2016: http://releases.jhu.edu/2016/06/08/johns-hopkins-team-makes-hobby-drones-crash-to-expose-design-flaws/

Computer Network Security

Journals

• Lanier Watkins, William H. Robinson, Raheem Beyah, “Using Network Traffic to Infer Hardware State: A Kernel-Level”, In ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems, 2015.
• Lanier Watkins, William H. Robinson, Raheem Beyah, “A Passive Solution to the CPU Resource Discovery Problem in Cluster Grid Networks.” In IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), December 2011.
• Lanier Watkins, William H. Robinson, Raheem Beyah, “A Passive Solution to the Memory Resource Discovery Problem in Grid Computing.” In IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (TNSM), December 2010.
• Lanier Watkins, Cherita Corbett, and Raheem Beyah, “Using Link RTT to Passively Detect Unauthorized Wireless Nodes.” In the International Journal of Security and Networks, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2009.

Conferences

• Mengchao Yue, William H. Robinson, Lanier Watkins and Chertia Corbett, “Constructing Timing-Based Covert Channels in Mobile Networks by Adjusting CPU Frequency”, In ACM International Workshop on Hardware and Architectural Support for Security and Privacy, 2014.
• Lanier Watkins, Raheem Beyah, and Cherita Corbett, “A Passive Approach to Rogue Access Point Detection.” In the Proceedings of IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), December 2007.
• Lanier Watkins, Raheem Beyah, and Cherita Corbett, “Passive Identification of Under Utilized CPUs in High Performance Cluster Grid Netwoks” In the Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), May 2008.

Internet of Things (IoT) Node Security

Journals

• Lanier Watkins and John Hurley, “Enhancing Cybersecurity by Defeating the Attack Lifecycle: Using Mobile Device Resource Usage Patterns to Detect Unauthentic Mobile Applications”, In the Journal of Information Warfare (JIW), December 2016.

Book Chapter

• Rahul Nair, Chinmohan Nayak, Kashif Memon, Lanier Watkins, Kevin Fairbanks, and William H. Robinson, “The Resource Usage Viewpoint of Industrial Control System Security: An Inference-based Intrusion Detection System”, To Appear In Cybersecurity for Industry 4.0 Analysis for Design and Manufacturing, A Springer book edited by Lane Thames (Tripwire, Inc., USA) and Dirk Schaefer (University of Bath, UK), 2017.

Conferences

• Nikunj Malik, Jayanarayan Chandramouli, Prahlad Suresh, Kevin D. Fairbanks, Lanier Watkins, and William H. Robinson, “Using Network Traffic To Verify Mobile Device Forensic Artifacts,” To Appear in the IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference, January 2017.
• Jayanarayan Chandramouli, Juan Ramos, Lakshmi Srinivasan, Prahlad Suresh, Garth V. Crosby, and Lanier Watkins, “Using Network Traffic to Infer Compromised Neighbors in Wireless Sensor Nodes,” To Appear in the IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference Workshop, January 2017.
• Michael Hooper , Yifan Tian, Runzuan Zhou, Bin Cao, Adrian P. Lauf, Lanier Watkins, William H. Robinson, and Wlajimir Alexis, “Securing Commercial WiFi-Based UAVs From Common Security Attacks,” To Appear in IEEE MILCOM 2016, Baltimore, MD, November 2016.
• Georgios Lontorfos, Kevin D Fairbanks, Lanier Watkins, and William H. Robinson, “Remotely Inferring Device Manipulation of Industrial Control Systems Via Network Behavior”, In the Proceedings of IEEE Workshop on Network Measurements (WNM), October 2015.
• Lanier Watkins, Garth V. Crosby and Afsana Sharmin, “‘Using Network Traffic to Infer Power Levels in Wireless Sensor Nodes”, In the Proceedings of the International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC), CNC Workshop, February 2014.
• Lanier Watkins, Cherita Corbett, Benjamin Salazar, Kevin Fairbanks and William H. Robinson, “Using Network Traffic to Remotely Identify the Type of Applications Executing on Mobile Devices” In Proceedings of IEEE Mobile Security Technologies (MoST), May 2013.
• Lanier Watkins, Raheem Beyah, and Cherita Corbett, “Using Network Traffic to Passively Detect Under Utilized Resources in High-Performance Cluster Grid Computing Environments.” In the Proceedings of ACM International Conference on Networks for Grid Applications (GRIDNETS), October 2007.

Vulnerability Monitoring & Analysis

Journals

• Lanier Watkins and John Hurley, ” The Next Generation of Scientific-Based Risk Metrics: Measuring Cyber Maturity”, In the International Journal of Cyber Warfare and Terrorism (IJCWT), July 2016.
• Lanier Watkins and John Hurley, “Cyber Maturity as Measured by Scientific-based Risk Metrics”, In the Journal of Information Warfare (JIW), October 2015.

Conferences

• Lanier Watkins and John Hurley, “Cyber Maturity as Measured by Scientific Risk-Based Metrics”, In the Proceedings of the International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security (ICCWS), March 2015.

Malware Monitoring & Analysis

• Lanier Watkins, Kurt Silberberg, Jose A Morales, and William H. Robinson, “Using Inherent Command and Control Vulnerabilities To Halt DDoS Attacks” In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software (MALCON), October 2015.
• Lanier Watkins, Christina Kawka, Cherita Corbett, and William Robinson, “Fighting Banking Botnets By Exploiting Inherent Command and Control Vulnerabilities”, In IEEE Proceedings of the International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software (MALCON), 2014.

Data Analytics & Machine Learning

• Lanier Watkins, Sean Beck, Jared Zook, Anna Buczak, Jeffery Chavis, William H. Robinson, Jose A. Morales, and Sameul Mishra, “Using Semi-supervised Machine Learning to Address the Big Data Problem in DNS Networks,” To Appear in IEEE Computing and Communication Workshop and Conference, January 2017.
• Anna Buczak, Paul Hanke, George Cancro, Michael Toma, Lanier Watkins, and Jeffery Chavis, “Detection of DNS Tunnels in PCAP Data by Random Forests Trees”, In the Proceedings of ACM Cyber and Information Security Research Conference, January 2016.
• Anna L. Buczak, Daniel S. Berman, Sean W. Yen, Lanier A. Watkins, Lien T. Duong, and Jeffrey S. Chavis, “Using Sequential Pattern Mining for Common Event Format (CEF) Cyber Data” To Appear in the ACM Cyber and Information Security Research Conference, May 2017.

Pure Science Research

• Alfred Msezane, Zineb Felfli, Dmitri Sokolovski, Lanier Watkins, et al, “Regge-Pole Calculation of the Resonance Contribution to Electron-Atom Cross Sections”, 3rd International Conference on Neural, Parallel and Scientific Computations, August 2006.
• Lanier Watkins, Kenneth R. Perry, John S. Hurley, B. Olson, and B. Pain, “Wavelet Transform Image Compression Prototype.” Technical Proceedings of the International Conference on Modeling and Simulation of Microsystems, 1999.

Referee Service for Journals / Magazines

• IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 2016
• IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 2015
• Journal of Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, 2014
• Journal of Risk Analysis, 2013
• Journal of Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, 2013
• Elsevier AD HOC Networks Journal, 2013
• IEEE Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor Systems, 2013
• IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 2012
• IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 2011
• Security and Communication Networks, 2011
• Elsevier Information Sciences, 2010
• IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 2010
• Hindawi Publishing Corporation, 2010

Technical Program Committees

• IEEE MILCOM, 2016
• International Workshop on Mobile Computing Security, 2016
• International Workshop on Mobile Computing Security, Program Committee, 2015
• IEEE ICC – Communication and Information Systems Security Symposium, 2015
• IEEE International Symposium on Security and Privacy in Internet of Things, 2013
• Euromicro PDP (Special Session on Energy Aware Systems), Program Committee, 2011
• International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communication (ICNC) Program Committee, 2011

Master’s Capstone Degrees Supervised

• Juan Ramos, Gaetano Snow, and Jessica Vallejo (December 2016), Master’s Capstone Project: “Penetration Testing in cross-vendor Wi-Fi Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)”
• Ren Hao (December 2016) Master’s Capstone Project: “Modifying Common Weakness Scoring System (CWSS) to Reflect Mitigation Factors”
• Lakshmi Narasimhan Srinivasan, Navaneeth Krishnan Subramania, and Prashanth Kannan (Spring 2016), Master’s Capstone Project: “DJI Phantom 3 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Penetration Testing”
• Sean Beck, (Spring 2016), Master’s Capstone Project: “Using a Semi-supervised Method to Detect Malicious Domains in Passive DNS Data”
• Forest Mead, Jeffrey Zielinski, and Deepak Agrawal (Fall 2015), Master’s Capstone Project: “Implementing a 2-Way Covert Timing Channel in Mobile Networks”
• Nikunj Malik, Jayanarayan Mittur Chandramouli, and Prahlad Suresh (Fall 2015), Master’s Capstone Project: “Using Network Traffic to Identify Mobile Operating Systems”
• Lionel Hansel Dsouza, Pavan Tej Chekuri, and Jeffrey Chan Huang (Fall 2015), Master’s Capstone Project: “Malware Analysis and Bot Herder Characterization for KINs ”
• Madhupreetha Chandrasekaran, Bing Han, and Apoorva Satish Patankar, (Fall 2015), Master’s Capstone Project: “Malware Analysis and Bot Herder Characterization for Pitou and Android Torec and NGE Mobi ”
• Yifan Tian, Runxuan Zhou, Bin Cao, and Michael Hooper, (Fall 2015), Master’s Capstone Project: “Bebop 1 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Penetration Testing”
• Wlajimir Alexis (Spring 2015), Master’s Capstone Project: “Automobile Driver Identification Using the Wavelet Transform and Machine Learning”
• Kurt Silberberg, M.S. in Security Informatics (Spring 2015), Master’s Capstone Project: “Monitoring DDoS Botnet C&C’s For Computer Forensic Artifacts”
• Ashwini Pugazhendhi, M.S. in Security Informatics (Fall 2014), Master’s Capstone Project: “A Network-based Thermal Hardware Trojan Detection Method”
• Georgios Lontorfos, M.S. in Security Informatics (Fall 2014), Master’s Capstone Project: “Remotely Identifying Rich Targets In SCADA Networks”
• Chengyuan Zhang, Fangyue Chen, and Wentao Li, M.S. in Security Informatics (Fall 2014), Master’s Capstone Project: “Mapping The Attack Surface For Zeus 2.0.8.9 Command And Control”
• Shijie Zhang, Li Xu, and Christina Kawka, M.S. in Security Informatics (Spring 2014), Master’s Capstone Project: “Malware Analysis of Zeus 2.0.8.9: The Development of A Tunable Attribution Framework and Remote Command and Control Reconnaissance”
• Amritha Lal, M.S. in Security Informatics (Fall 2013), Master’s Capstone Project: “Network-Based Detection of Malware in Mobile Networks”
• Shuang Xie and Tianning Yang, M.S. in Security Informatics (Fall 2013), Master’s Capstone Project: “Identifying Mobile Malware Instructions Which Induce Information Leakage in Network Traffic”
• Mengchao Yue, M.S. in Security Informatics (Fall 2013), Master’s Capstone Project: “Covert Timing Channel: An Android-Based Mobile Application”