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ou’ve seen the headlines: massive cyber breaches at major corporations compromising the confidential information of millions; global ransomware attacks that hold critical systems and data hostage; well-orchestrated spear phishing campaigns devised to disrupt American national security interests; and large-scale distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that take down websites of all sizes.

Add to that the surging levels of internet-based crimes that often don’t make the news, from cyberbullying to internet scams and identity theft. No longer the actions of a few rogue hackers, online attacks are now big business and today’s cyber criminals are more sophisticated, better resourced and increasingly more difficult to track down.

Enter Richard Harknett. For more than 25 years, the University of Cincinnati professor of political science has researched and advised senior government officials on how to protect against and deter threats, both real-world and cyber, in an interconnected world.

Harknett’s impressive resume includes cybersecurity briefings at the White House, Pentagon, U.S. State Department and Great Britain’s No. 10 Downing St. In the 1990s, he advised the Clinton administration on the development of critical cyber infrastructure before being appointed to Ohio’s Cyber Security Education and Economic Development Council.

In 2015, Harknett became the first scholar-in-residence for U.S. Cyber Command, an initiative of the Department of Defense, where he interacted with top American military and intelligence leaders to improve the nation’s cybersecurity policies. He most recently returned from England, where he had spent the past year as a U.S.-U.K. Fulbright Scholar in Cybersecurity at the University of Oxford.

An academic at heart, Harknett shrugs off the accolades. “I take very seriously the fact that we’re a public research university and that there’s a public service role for us,” he says.



FROM NUKES TO HACKS



The savvy political scientist began his academic career researching another global threat, nuclear weapons, before arriving at UC in 1991. Then, the Pentagon called him up.

“They said, ‘We got this thing called a browser. What do you think?’” says Harknett with a laugh.

For the next few years, Harknett shifted his focus from the specter of nuclear war to the nascent “informational warfare” threat, becoming one of the few social scientists in a field still dominated by techies. He had resumed his work on nuclear weapons when, in 2006, the government came calling again.

“The Department of Defense said, ‘Hey, you know all that stuff you did in the 1990s? Well, you were pretty much right. Could you reprise it for us?’” Harknett says.