The SPHERE team is excited to announce that our paper, “Building SPHERE: A Public Research Infrastructure for Reproducible Cybersecurity Experimentation,” has been accepted for presentation at the 42nd IEEE Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), taking place December 7–11, 2026, in Los Angeles, California. The paper will also be published in the conference proceedings. ACSAC…

The SPHERE team gathered at Northeastern University in Boston on October 1–2, 2026, for a two-day all-hands meeting to review progress, address challenges, and establish priorities for Year 4 of the NSF-funded research infrastructure project. The meeting brought together researchers, developers, operations, and project management staff from the USC Information Sciences Institute (USC-ISI), Northeastern University,…

Cybersecurity research testbeds and cyber ranges share many technologies and challenges, but often operate in separate worlds. How can these infrastructures work together to advance both scientific research and practical cybersecurity training? That question brought members of the SPHERE team together with colleagues from across the international cybersecurity community at Dagstuhl Seminar 26422: Cyber Security…

SPHERE participated in the 2026 Midscale Experimental Research Infrastructure Forum (MERIF), held September 29–30 at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Members of the SPHERE team and user community contributed throughout the two-day workshop through presentations, demonstrations, session leadership, and program planning. This year’s theme, “Elevating User Impact,” brought together NSF-supported research infrastructure providers…

Did you know your smart TV may be taking snapshots of what you watch? Want to investigate what happens to that information? Northeastern University and SPHERE are hosting a Smart TV ACR Hackathon October 19-20 in Boston, with online participation available around the world. More details and registration are available here. Modern smart TVs collect…

As the summer comes to a close, SPHERE would like to thank our 2026 interns for a productive summer and the many contributions they made to the project. This year, 23 students participated in SPHERE internships, including 18 interns working onsite with SPHERE teams at the USC Information Sciences Institute in Marina del Rey, Northeastern…

USC Information Sciences Institute is proud to welcome this summer’s cohort of SPHERE interns and Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) students. A total of 33 students are joining across the two programs. The SPHERE interns span three locations and a virtual cohort: 13 interns are joining onsite in Marina del Rey, CA; two at Northeastern…

In February 2026, the NSF-funded Security and Privacy Heterogeneous Environment for Reproducible Experimentation (SPHERE) project hosted a week-long cybersecurity residency with Trusted CI, the National Science Foundation’s Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. The residency marked an important milestone in SPHERE’s transition from construction toward sustained operations, strengthening an already robust security posture through formal alignment with…

The SPHERE team recently participated in the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), held two weeks ago in Honolulu, Hawaii. ACSAC is one of the premier international forums for applied cybersecurity research and practice, bringing together researchers, practitioners, and industry and government stakeholders to advance the state of computer security. SPHERE was represented by Jelena…

The SPHERE team is excited to be featured in the USC Information Sciences Institute 2024 Year in Review! Our article, “Cybersecurity Through Real-World Experimentation” (pages 34–35), highlights how SPHERE enables cutting-edge research by providing modular, real-world testbeds that replicate complex cyber systems. “SPHERE’s flexible design and user-friendly tools ensure that everyone, from students to experts,…