National Science Foundation also backing research to ensure cybersecurity systems are flawless
The National Science Foundation is funneling more than $1.7 million into a pair of computer security projects outlined today by the researchers’ schools.
The NSF is putting $1.2 million into a project in which researchers from Clarkson University, the University at Albany-SUNY, the University of New Mexico, the University of Illinois, and the Naval Research Laboratory will attempt to build a method for spotting cybersecurity system flaws before the systems become operational. The project, which will bring together experts in areas such as automated reasoning and cryptography, could also be used to identify trouble with existing security systems.
“When we finish this project, it’s not going to be the end,” said Professor Christopher Lynch, chair of Clarkson University’s Division of Mathematics and Computer Science, in a statement. “We come up with better ways to protect our data, and then people who are trying to steal our data come up with better ways of doing that. It’s a battle back and forth. I don’t think there will ever be a point where we’ve solved the problem.”
Separately, the NSF has awarded a 5-year grant to Danfeng Yao, an assistant professor in the computer science department at Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering to fund her work on software designed to figure out the difference between human and malware behavior.
Yao will concentrate on building a program that can adaptively identify and analyze the unique ways in which humans use computers and prevent malware from copying such behaviors.
“Existing malware-detection approaches are limited in their ability to identify and discern malicious bots from legitimate and benign ones,” Yao said in a statement. “The proliferation and sophistication of malware clandestine activities – as well as its growing capacity to do serious harm – requires constant vigilance and upgrading.”
