USF Research News

Five USF Research Teams Awarded $50,000 Grants to Develop Cybersecurity Solutions

February 25, 2016
Grants from the Florida Center for Cybersecurity focus on topics important to national security

TAMPA, Fla. - Five research teams led by University of South Florida faculty members have each been awarded $50,000 grants as part of the 2016 Florida Center for Cybersecurity (FC2) Seed Grant Program.

A total of $500,000 in research grants were awarded Wednesday to ten teams representing eight institutions from Florida’s State University System.

“Through the Seed Grant Program, FC² is investing in ideas and promoting collaboration among cybersecurity faculty across the SUS,” says Adam Sheffield, associate director for FC². “We had a strong pool of applicants this year, and are confident that many of these projects will grow to support research and attract companies, expanding the cybersecurity workforce in Florida.”

According to FC², teams will focus their research on topics important to national security, including protecting the power grid from a cyber-attack, Internet of things solutions, and thwarting cyber-induced attacks.

The projects involving team members from USF include:

• “Cyber Resilience for Injection Attacks” – with USF professor Jay Ligatti
This project aims to detect and prevent cybersecurity attacks that current technologies fail to detect. This is the second year that Ligatti’s project has received funding through a seed grant, and is now in a more developed stage.

• “Nonlinear Model-Based Cyber Attack-Rellient Grid Control” – with USF professor Zhixin Miao
This project investigates cyber-attacks on power grid communication networks and the counter measures that can be deployed.
• “Creative and Composing Software Defined Networking (SDN) Security Modules” – with USF professor Kaiqi Xiong
This project uses SDN to address some of the most critical security problems in networking.

• “Trusted Internet of Things (IoT) Using Cross-layer Leveraging of Reconfigurable Device Signatures” – with USF professor Selcuk Kose
The focus of the project is aimed at the growing concern over Internet of Things device security, which is essentially any technological device that can share data via a network.

• “Smart Grid Security Protection through Cross-Layer Approaches” – with USF professor Yao Liu
The project proposes new security specification for smart device design and deployment. This is the second year this research has been funded through a seed grant.

The University of South Florida is a high-impact, global research university dedicated to student success. USF is a Top 25 research university among public institutions nationwide in total research expenditures, according to the National Science Foundation. Serving over 48,000 students, the USF System has an annual budget of $1.6 billion and an annual economic impact of $4.4 billion. USF is a member of the American Athletic Conference.
-USF-

Media Contact:
Adam Freeman
(813) 974-9047
adamfreeman@usf.edu

Story Source:
Jay Ligatti
(813) 974-0908
ligatti@cse.usf.edu