HBCU-RISE: Security Engineering for Resilient Mobile Cyber-Physical Systems

Howard University, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

Security Engineering for Resilient Mobile Cyber-Physical Systems The Historically Black Colleges and Universities - Research Infrastructure for Science and Engineering (HBCU-RISE) program supports the development of research capability at Historically Black Colleges and Universities that offer doctoral degrees in science and engineering disciplines. Supported projects have a unifying research focus in one of the research areas supported by the National Science Foundation, a direct connection to the long-term plans of the host department, institutional strategic plan and mission, and plans for expanding institutional research capacity, as well as increasing the production of doctoral students, especially those underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. With National Science Foundation support, Howard University in Washington, DC, will conduct a research project entitled "Security Engineering for Resilient Mobile Cyber-Physical Systems". The project consists of five related activities: (1) develop reproducible mobile cyber-physical system units; (2) design and evaluate a federated framework for incident detection and; (3) design and evaluate coupling of control, communication, and computation in mobile cyber-physical systems with a federated framework; (4) design and evaluate incident detection and response systems; (5) evaluation and validation of the proposed framework. The proposed research leverages multidisciplinary expertise in cybersecurity for connected systems, transportation cyber physical systems, cognitive radio networking, information security, big data analytics and distributed cloud computing to significantly advance the knowledge base and understanding of the emerging field of cyber-physical system security. The goal is to design, develop and evaluate the cyber-defense solutions for resilient cyber-physical systems using a federated framework. The project also aims to strengthen the institution's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science doctoral program and attract, retain and graduate underrepresented minority graduate and undergraduate students in the field of cyber security research. The project will enhance integrated cybersecurity research and education at Howard University by developing a mobile Physical Systems testbed for implementing and evaluating adaptive cyber-defense solutions for resiliency. The project supports United States government efforts to produce the next-generation of cybersecurity experts needed for government, academia and industry. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.