That tech, called generative AI, holds the key to a new system “that not only anticipates potential attacks but also prepares systems to counteract previously unseen cyberthreats,” said Mohamed Rahouti, Ph.D., assistant professor in the computer and information science department and one of Fordham’s IBM research fellows.

He and a crew of graduate students are working on new systems that, he said, are needed to get ahead of sophisticated attacks that are constantly evolving. Their focus is a type of easy-to-launch attack that has proved crippling to companies and government agencies ever since the internet began.

Denial of Service Attacks

Cybercriminals sometimes overwhelm and freeze a company’s or government agency’s computer systems by bombarding them with way more internet traffic than they can handle, using multiple computers or multiple online accounts. This is known as a distributed denial of service attack, or DDOS.

A typical attack could cost a company $22,000 a minute, he said. Nearly 30,000 of them take place every day around the world. Many of them are foiled by programs that use machine learning and artificial intelligence.

But those programs don’t always know what to look for, since they typically rely on snapshots of past traffic, Rahouti said. Another challenge is the growing number of internet-connected devices, from smart watches to autonomous vehicles, that could provide cybercriminals with new avenues for attack.

Generative AI

Hence the research into using generative AI, which could produce a far wider range of possible attack scenarios by working upon computer traffic data to make new connections and predictions, he said. When it’s trained using the scenarios produced by generative AI, “then my machine learning/AI model will be much more capable of detecting the different types of DDOS attacks,” Rahouti said.

To realize this vision, Rahouti and his team of graduate students are working on several projects. They recently used generative AI and other techniques to expand upon a snapshot of network traffic data and create a clearer picture of what is and isn’t normal. This helps machine learning programs see what shouldn’t be there. “We were amazed at the quality of this enhanced picture,” Rahouti said.

This bigger dataset enabled their machine learning model to spot low-profile attacks it had previously missed, he said.

Large Language Models

For their next project, they’re studying a large language model—the kind that powers ChatGPT—for ideas about how generative AI can be applied to cybersecurity. They’re using InstructLab, an open-source tool launched by IBM and Red Hat in May.

With all the companies and university researchers invested in new uses for generative AI, Rahouti is optimistic about its future applications in cybersecurity. The goal is to develop a system that runs on its own in the background, detecting both existing and emerging threats without being explicitly told what to look for.

“At present, we don’t have a fully autonomous system with these capabilities,” Rahouti said, “but advancements in AI and machine learning are moving us closer to achieving this level of real-time, adaptive cybersecurity.”

“You need to go with what’s newsworthy and with what’s going to garner the public interest and inform people, because that’s the whole reason for doing this,” she told the students, who were designing a survey on major issues facing Americans today.

She had no idea at the time—weeks before the COVID-19 outbreak forced the University to close its campuses—that the lesson would be so timely.

“I never in my wildest dreams imagined this scenario, in these extreme circumstances,” said McDermott, professor of political science and director of the Elections and Campaign Management master’s program.

Working remotely, McDermott and the four students ripped up the poll they’d spent a third of the semester working on and drafted 23 brand new questions that examine American society in the time of COVID-19.

The result is the Fordham Poll, a survey that was originally designed to address areas of American life that have been overlooked by most pollsters today but was retooled to reflect the life during a pandemic. The results of the poll, which was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, were published the last week of April.

It covered areas such as the upcoming presidential election, how the pandemic has affected black Americans, the role that faith is playing in American’s lives, and people’s attitudes toward health care. It took place between April 16 and April 20 among 1,003 respondents nationwide by phone and has a margin of sampling error of 4.33 percentage points.

Faith in Governors, Not President

The first group of questions, detailed in The Coronavirus, the Election, and Daily Life section, revealed that Americans are most likely to turn to public health officials, their state governors, or friends and families for guidance during the coronavirus pandemic. Only 43% of Americans say President Trump is a very or somewhat important source of guidance at this time. McDermott said that perhaps as a result, he trails his presumptive challenger in the November presidential election polls, Joe Biden.

A Nation Divided by Illness

Questions grouped together in the Black Americans Bear the Burden of Coronavirus section showed the emotional toll the virus is taking on black and Latinx Americans, as evidence has emerged showing that coronavirus infections are disproportionately higher in areas with high minority populations.

Nearly half of black and Latinx Americans surveyed reported being extremely or very worried that they or someone in their family will contract the virus, compared to only 38% of whites. Additionally, black Americans are more likely than either white or Latinx Americans to be on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, with higher proportions still required to show up to a workplace. They also reported higher rates of personal infection, and of the death of someone they personally know.

McDermott said she considered these findings to be the most significant in the poll.

“The experiences of white and black Americans, and the disparity between those two groups, was not shocking, because we knew they would be there, but they really were so different. The disparity is so huge,” she said.

“It was very sobering to see those numbers and to realize it’s not uniformly affecting people. To get a sense of that in a public opinion poll was really important.”

The Role of Faith

And how are Americans in general coping? In a section titled Faith and Coping with the Coronavirus Outbreak, pollsters learned that a large majority has found consolation in their religious or spiritual faith.

Sixty-four percent of Americans have been helped by their religious or spiritual faith during the coronavirus outbreak–including 35% who have been helped a lot and 29% who have been helped somewhat. Those numbers are higher among regular churchgoers.

White evangelical Protestants reported being helped the most by their faith, while three-quarters of mainline Protestants and 62% of Catholics reported that faith has somewhat helped them during the pandemic.

“Religious and spiritual faith is important sustenance for most Americans during this time of crisis,” said McDermott. “Faith is helping them get through.”

Attitudes on Health Care

The last section, The Coronavirus and Attitudes towards Healthcare in America, found that despite apparent gaps in the U.S. health care system during the coronavirus outbreak, Americans are generally satisfied with the system’s performance.

More than seven in 10 Americans reported being satisfied with how the American health care system is working during the coronavirus pandemic—including 26% who are very satisfied— while only 28% are dissatisfied. Satisfaction transcends partisan affiliation, with 64% of self-described Democrats, 69% of independents, and 80% of Republicans expressing satisfaction.

That said, McDermott noted that the findings indicate that the crisis may be driving more Americans to support a government-run health care system. That’s because respondents also expressed support for guaranteed quality health care for all Americans, those infected with the coronavirus, and other groups, regardless of party affiliation. Support for access to quality care regardless of citizenship status was also high.

McDermott said the poll results were by and large in line with what the class expected.

“We found them interesting, just to see how people were coping, and in some ways it was nice to see that people were coping, that they had adjusted, they were following the rules, doing what was advised, and just surviving as Americans,” she said.

On the other hand, the experience the class had is unlikely to ever be replicated.

“Coming up with questionnaires is the most labor-intensive part of polling. Designing questions in a way that you get the answers that accurately measure people’s true attitudes and behaviors is one of the harder things to learn in polling,” she said.

“Going through that with the students was in way, a really special semester, because they got to go through it twice with two different surveys.”

This fall, Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences will offer students the opportunity to master polling’s unique blend of science and art with an advanced certificate in public opinion and survey research. The certificate, which is being offered through the Department of Political Science, is an extension of the Elections and Campaign Management master’s program.

Registration for the certificate program is currently open; students can complete it in a year with a full-time course load or in two years on a part-time basis. The curriculum comprises five courses: Introduction to Quantitative Analysis, Political Survey Research, American Political Behavior, Survey Research Data Analysis, and Public Opinion Certificate Practicum.

The last two courses have been created specifically for the certificate program.

For the practicum, students will be designing and analyzing a new annual survey, called the Fordham American Faith Poll.

Monika McDermott, Ph.D., professor of political science and director of the Elections and Campaign Management program, said the faith poll is what really distinguishes this certificate program from others that are similar.

“Each year, the students will decide exactly what the poll will be on, they will write the questions, it will be fielded by a professional calling house, and then the students will do data analysis, and we’ll release the results publicly,” she said.

“This certificate is designed to teach students a specific skillset, one that is useful in a whole range of fields.”

In addition to giving students hands-on experience creating, executing, and analyzing a poll, McDermott said the Fordham American Faith Poll will address an area of American life that she says has been overlooked by most pollsters today.

“Most polling is just horse race polling about politics, and doesn’t delve into the deep belief structures and aspects of American faith and culture that we’d like the poll to do,” she said.

That’s true even of the high-profile polls conducted by Monmouth University and Quinnipiac University, she said, which focus a great deal of time on the presidential race.

“This is going to be up to the students, but if it were to be about politics, it would probably be more about how Americans relate their faith to politics,” McDermott said.

“It could also be just about faith in Americans’ lives. How do Americans worship? How much do they worship? How important is it to them? These are questions we don’t really have in-depth answers to.”

McDermott acknowledged that the polling industry’s reputation took a bit of a hit when Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, but she said it was undeserved. After all, she said, most polls had Hillary Clinton up by 2 to 3 percentage points, and in the end, she won the popular vote while losing the Electoral College. One thing she said students who earn this certificate will come away with is a better understanding of not only what polls can do, but what they can’t do.

“People like to use polls to predict things, when that’s not what polling is supposed to do. I think we’ve gotten so wrapped up in wanting to know what’s going to happen in an election that we expect polls to be a magical predictor,” she said.

“I teach students that polling is only of the moment. It only tells you what people are thinking when you ask your question, and their opinion could change tomorrow. It could change for very good reasons, or it could change for idiosyncratic reasons.”

Since courses such as Survey Research Data Analysis and Quantitative Analysis are not exclusively concerned with politics, McDermott said the certificate will also be of interest to anyone looking to work in market research and data analytics.

“There’s whole host of fields that want people who can measure public opinion. That’s what we’re looking to train students in,” she said.

“It’ll still have a focus on political polling just because it’s tied to the elections and campaigns management program, but it’s not going to be limited to that in any way.”