Planning Grant: I/UCRC for Joining Center for Configuration Analytics and Automation

Colorado State University, Fort Collins CO

Investigators

Abstract

This award will help explore the feasibility of a new site addition to the Center for Configuration Analytics and Automation led by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC). The award would look at adding Colorado State University to George Mason University (GMU) as a site of the center. The proposed site plans to complement the existing activities by bringing expertise in the areas of networking, software assurance, data streams, privacy and applied cryptography. The UNC/GMU CCAA focuses on cyber-security risks and defense management capabilities in enterprise IT systems, cloud/SDN data centers, and cyber physical systems. The planned CSU site complements the strengths of the existing center by focusing more on these issues in the context of infrastructure security and resilience, data privacy and human factors. If successful, students and faculty will be working on industrial relevant applied research problems that could generate US Jobs in this unique area, and help with the industrial job placement of students working on Center projects. The emerging generation of IT systems are more complex, more integrated with others, more mobile, and more connected through the Internet that introduce complex sources of misconfigurations, exposure, and newer vulnerabilities. Unavoidable and/or intentional human interactions with these systems introduce an additional layer of vulnerability and source of misconfiguration. The proposed center will bring in projects that are driven by the needs of the industry and aim to solve real-world problems.