Expertise

Cybercrime, Social Engineering, Critical Infrastructure and National Security, Privacy and Surveillance, Organized Crime, Corporate/White-Collar Crime, Experiential Learning, Cybersecurity Education

Biography

Aunshul Rege, PhD, is an Associate Professor with the Department of Criminal Justice, and she directs the Cybersecurity in Application, Research, and Education (CARE Lab) at Temple University. She holds a PhD and MA in Criminal Justice, an MA and BA (Hons.) in Criminology, and a BSc in Computer Science. 

She has been researching proactive cybersecurity in the context of cybercrimes against critical infrastructures for over 10 years. Specifically, her National Science Foundation funded (CAREER, CPS, EAGER) research examines adversarial and defender behavior, decision-making, adaptations, modus operandi, and group dynamics. 

More recently, she has started researching social engineering, which is the psychological manipulation of individuals to start and maintain cyberattacks via her NSF SaTC EDU grant. Dr. Rege has been hosting international social engineering competitions for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students since 2021. 

Dr. Rege's research has been published in several outlets, such as the Journal of Information Warfare, Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, the Security Journal, and the IEEE Intelligent Systems. She serves on the Advisory Board of Black Girls Hack, Raices Cyber, and Breaking Barriers Women in Cybersecurity and she is the research lead for the DefCon SE Community. Dr. Rege and her work have been featured in several media outlets, such as WHYY/PBS/NPR
Studio 2, BBC World Service, Security Week, and Dark Reading, to name a few.

Website | Curriculum Vitae

Selected Publications

• Rege, A., & Bleiman, R.(2023). “A free and community-driven critical infrastructure ransomware dataset”. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Cybersecurity, Situational Awareness and Social Media: Cyber Science 2022; 20–21 June; Wales (pp. 25-37). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. 
• Bleiman, R., Williams, J., Rege, A., & Williams, K. (2023). “Exploring the MITRE ATT&CK® Matrix in SE Education”. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Cybersecurity, Situational Awareness and Social Media: Cyber Science 2022; 20–21 June; Wales (pp. 133-149). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore.
• Williams, K., Bleiman, R., & Rege, A. (2022). “Educating educators on social engineering: Experiences developing and implementing a social engineering workshop for all education levels”. In 2022 IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference (ISEC) (pp. 188-194). IEEE.
• Rege, A. & Bleiman, R. (2022). “Collegiate Social Engineering Capture the Flag Competition”. In 2021 APWG Symposium on Electronic Crime Research (eCrime) (pp. 1-11). IEEE. Winner of Best Student Co-Authored Paper Award.

Courses Taught

• Cybercrime
• Organized Crime
• Nature of Crime
• Privacy and Surveillance