REU Site: Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Cyber Identity

North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, Greensboro NC

Investigators

Abstract

This funding establishes a new Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site at North Carolina A&T University. Undergraduate students from across the nation will participate in summer research focused on cyber identity. The digitization of our everyday lives has increased the need to establish safer and more secure ways to provide accurate identification for online transactions and to protect personal information. The students will participate in research projects that investigate methods to help users control the security of their digital identity. Cyber identity research and its applications hold great promise for establishing trusted online identity, reducing identity theft, and ensuring privacy. The challenges of cyber identity research provide an exciting opportunity to bring together faculty researchers and students to investigate fundamental principles and design strategies in computing systems to develop real-world, secure systems that we can all trust. This project is co-funded by the Cyber Corps (R): Scholarship for Service Program. The research projects explored in this site focus on open research challenges in the areas of computational frameworks, attacks on cyber identity, and mitigation strategies. Impacts of the research include an advanced computational framework for numerical and conceptual identities, extended webIDs for online identity and login, new approaches to alleviate replay attacks in Biometric based Access Control Systems, improved analytics for authorship analysis of code associated with malware, and enhanced cyber attack detection and attribution to attackers. The students will use of state-of-the art facilities and devices and work with faculty mentors with significant expertise in cyber identity research. The site will focus on recruiting under-represented minorities, particularly drawing on a large network of colleges in the region around the host institution. The students will participate in professional development activities that make them more aware of graduate school and professional aspects of a computing career. The project should contribute to the development of a diverse scientific workforce with expertise in areas critical to national security in the evolving global society of the future.