Ehab Al-Shaer

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Ehab Al-Shaer
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CitizenshipAmerican
EducationKing Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (BSc),

Northeastern University (MSc),

Old Dominion University (PhD)
OccupationComputer Science Professor

Ehab Al-Shaer is an Arab-American computer scientist, academic, and entrepreneur specializing in cybersecurity analytics, automation, and configuration verification.[1][2][3] He is a Distinguished Career Professor at at the Information Networking Institute in the College of Engineering and a Distinguished Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.[4] Al-Shaer was designated a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in Cybersecurity Analytics and Automation in 2011.[5] From 2013 to 2020, he served as the founding director of the National Science Foundation Center for Cybersecurity Analytics and Automation (CCAA).[6][7]

Early life and education

Al-Shaer received his bachelor of science degree in computer engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in 1990, a master of science in computer science from Northeastern University in 1993, and a PhD in computer science from Old Dominion University in 1998.[8][9][10] His doctoral dissertation, Hierarchical Filtering-based Monitoring Architecture for Large-scale Distributed Systems, addressed distributed systems monitoring architectures.[10]

Career and research contributions

Al-Shaer began his academic career in 1998 as an assistant professor at DePaul University’s School of Computer Science, Telecommunications, and Information Systems.[11] He became an associate professor and directed the Network Security and Multimedia Laboratory until 2008.

In 2008, he joined the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) as an associate professor and director of the Cyber Defense and Network Assurability Center.[12] He was promoted to full professor in 2011.[13] Between 2013 and 2020, he served as director of the National Science Foundation Center on Cybersecurity Analytics and Automation (CCAA).[14][7] He was also a visiting scholar at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in 2015.[15]

In 2020, Al-Shaer joined Carnegie Mellon University as a distinguished career professor at the Information Networking Institute (INI) in the College of Engineering. In 2021, he was also appointed as distinguished research fellow in the School of Computer Science and a faculty member of CyLab.[4][3]

Al-Shaer’s research covers formal methods for verifying cybersecurity configurations, adaptive firewall policy optimization, AI-driven cyber defense, and cyber-physical systems resilience.[16][17] He introduced verification frameworks using Binary Decision Diagrams and Satisfiability Modulo Theories to analyze configurations for enterprise, cloud, and smart grid systems. These efforts led to the development of tools including ConfigChecker, SDNChecker, CloudChecker, IoTChecker, and AMIChecker.[18][19]

His work in moving target defense introduced adaptive techniques for dynamic mutation of network configurations, including IP addresses and routing paths, to reduce attack predictability. In autonomous cyber defense, he contributed to adaptive cyber deception through frameworks such as Attribution-Temptation-Engagement (ATE) and systems like symbSODA and CHIMERA, which apply AI and symbolic execution for automated deception against malware and advanced persistent threats.[20]

Al-Shaer also developed domain-specific language models for analyzing unstructured cyber threat intelligence and adaptive playbooks for Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) systems using deep reinforcement learning.[21][22] His research has extended to the cybersecurity of power systems, focusing on Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and Energy Management Systems (EMS), where he developed formal methods to assess and mitigate cyberattack impacts.[15]

Al-Shaer has edited nine academic books, written more than 300 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, and supervised over sixteen doctoral dissertations.[23][24] He has collaborated with government and industry partners, including Cisco, Intel, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Navy. He also served on the board of CyberPhantom, acquired by Splunk in 2018, and founded the cybersecurity startups CyberDNA Security and TTPHUNT.[1]

Selected publications

  • Al-Shaer, E., & Hamed, H. (2004). Anomaly discovery in distributed firewalls. IEEE INFOCOM, 2004, 2605–2616.
  • Hamed H., El-Atawy A., Al-Shaer E, (2006). On Dynamic Optimization of Packet Matching in High Speed Firewalls. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), Vol. 24, Issue 10, 1817 – 1830, Oct. 2006.
  • Al-Shaer, E., & Hamed, H. (2006). Taxonomy of conflicts in network security policies. IEEE Communications Magazine, 44(3), 134–141.
  • Al-Shaer, E., El-Atawy A., & Samak T., (2009). Automated Pseudo-live Testing of Firewall Configuration Enforcement. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), Issue: 3, Volume: 27, April 2009.
  • Al-Shaer, E., Marrero, W., El-Atawy, A., & Al-Badawi, K. (2009). Network security configuration in a box: End-to-end security configuration verification. IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), 123–132.
  • Ali, M. Q., Al-Shaer, E., Khan, H., & Khayam, S. A. (2013). Automated anomaly detector adaptation using adaptive threshold tuning. ACM Transactions on Information and System Security, 15(4), Article 17.
  • Duan, Q., Jafarian, J. H., & Al-Shaer, E. (2015). An effective address mutation approach for disrupting reconnaissance attacks. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 10(12), 2562–2577.
  • Ali, M. Q., & Al-Shaer, E. (2015). Randomization-based intrusion detection system for advanced metering infrastructure. ACM Transactions on Information and System Security, 18(2), Article 7.
  • Rahman, A., & Al-Shaer, E. (2017). Automated synthesis of distributed network access controls: A formal framework with refinement. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 28(6), 1627–1640.
  • Husari, G., Al-Shaer, E., Ahmed, M., Chu, B., & Niu, X. (2017). TTPDrill: Automatic and accurate extraction of threat actions from unstructured text of CTI sources. Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC).
  • Sajid, M. S. I., Wei, J., Abdeen, B., Al-Shaer, E., & Islam, M. M. (2023). symbSODA: Configurable and verifiable orchestration automation for active malware deception. ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security, 26(4), 1–36.
  • Dutta, A., Al-Shaer, E., Aghaei, E., Duan, Q., & Yasar, H. (2024). Security control grid for optimized cyber defense planning. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, October 2024.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Ehab al-Shaer - Distinguished Career Professor at Carnegie Mellon University". THE ORG. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  2. ↑ "2026 Ehab Al-Shaer: Computer Science Researcher – H-Index, Publications & Awards". Research.com. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Ehab Al-Shaer". Cybersecurity Symposium. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Ehab Al-Shaer (UNCC) - CCAA". www.andrew.cmu.edu. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  5. ↑ Al-Shaer, Ehab; Al-Shaer, Ehab (2011-10-01). "Subject Matter Expert Profile – Dr. Ehab S. Al-Shaer, Information Assurance Newsletter, Vol. 14, No. 4, Fall 2011 (DTIC)". doi:10.5281/zenodo.17510422.
  6. ↑ Al-Shaer, Ehab. "Planning Grant: I/UCRC for Configuration Analytics and Automation".
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 "IUCRC: Configuration Analytics and Automation (CCAA) IAB Meeting | NSF - U.S. National Science Foundation". www.nsf.gov. 2018-05-08. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  8. ↑ Aghaei, Ehsan; Niu, Xi; Shadid, Waseem; Al-Shaer, Ehab (2023). Li, Fengjun; Liang, Kaitai; Lin, Zhiqiang; Katsikas, Sokratis K. (eds.). "SecureBERT: 18th EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, SecureComm 2022". Security and Privacy in Communication Networks - 18th EAI International Conference, SecureComm 2022, Proceedings. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, LNICST. pp. 39–56. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-25538-0_3.
  9. ↑ "Ehab S. Al-Shaer". www.wikidata.org. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Al-Shaer, Ehab (1998-01-01). "A Hierarchical Filtering-Based Monitoring Architecture for Large-scale Distributed Systems". Computer Science Theses & Dissertations. doi:10.25777/s1mv-9728.
  11. ↑ "Author". ieeexplore.ieee.org. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  12. ↑ "Ehab Al-Shaer - ICSE 2025". conf.researchr.org. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  13. ↑ WFAE (2011-01-20). "Cyber Security". WFAE 90.7 - Charlotte's NPR News Source. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  14. ↑ Al-Shaer, Ehab. "Planning Grant: I/UCRC for Configuration Analytics and Automation".
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 "New AI Model Aims to Plug Key Gap in Cybersecurity Readiness". www.pnnl.gov. 2023-05-22. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  16. ↑ "Ehab Salem Al-Shaer". ACM Digital Library. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  17. ↑ Al-Shaer, Ehab (2014). "Automated Firewall Analytics". SpringerLink. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-10371-6.
  18. ↑ "Trending Papers - Hugging Face". huggingface.co. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  19. ↑ CyberSecurityChief (2017-12-21). "ActiveCyber Interviews Professor Ehab Al-Shaer on Advanced Research in Autonomous Cyber Defenses". ActiveCyber. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  20. ↑ "Prof. Ehab Alshaer - Professional Website". ealshaer.github.io. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  21. ↑ Aghaei, Ehsan; Niu, Xi; Shadid, Waseem; Al-Shaer, Ehab (2023). Li, Fengjun; Liang, Kaitai; Lin, Zhiqiang; Katsikas, Sokratis K. (eds.). "SecureBERT: 18th EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, SecureComm 2022". Security and Privacy in Communication Networks - 18th EAI International Conference, SecureComm 2022, Proceedings. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, LNICST. pp. 39–56. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-25538-0_3.
  22. ↑ N, Balaji (2023-05-22). "Exclusive! Scientists Developed an AI Model that Automatically Links Vulnerabilities With Cyber Attacks". Cyber Security News. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  23. ↑ "World's Best Computer Science Scientists: H-Index Computer Science Science Ranking in United States 2025/2026". Research.com. Retrieved 2026-01-06.
  24. ↑ al-shaer, ehab. "Ehab Al-Shaer - Independent Researcher". independent.academia.edu. Retrieved 2026-01-06.

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