A team of researchers at The University of Alabama in Huntsville is developing lightweight virtualisation architecture to use in cyber security development. The new technology may benefits the security of products and tools such as industrial control systems, cloud-based systems as well as automobiles.

The new project is called Dieletric. The research team from the University of Alabam in Huntsville is funded by a one-year grant offered by the National Security Agency and worth $299,622. Thanks to the project, the architecture will move a step forward thanks to the inclusion of cybersecurity features in the design process of the product.

The team working on Dieletric includes Dr. David Coe Dr. Jeffrey Kulick and Dr. Aleksandar Milenkovic, belonging to the UAH Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and Dr. Letha Etzkorn and Dr. Sun-il Kim, part of the UAH Computer Science Department. Through cross faculty collaborations the team has already achieved positive results in the past, such as the development of several whitepapers and the submission of different proposal involving cybersecurity and related systems. The current study comes from previous observation and a strong background. In fact, some of the actions have been decided analysing the information collected by Dr. Kulick and Dr. Coe’s previous research on safety-critical systems. It emerged the importance of including safety measures in the system design and development, rather than adding them in a second step following the traditional trends.

Dr. Coe, the project principal researcher explains: “While finding flaws and repairing them will continue to be an important focus in cybersecurity research, this proposal focuses on an architectural approach to building security into the system at the outset”. Dr. Milenkovic’s expertise also contributed to the project, thanks to his previous work in secure processing, hardware and software co-design and embedded systems.

The funds are expected to arrive on about the 15th of August 2015, allowing the team to hire two graduate student researchers to support them through the summer of 2016. “With the Internet of Things, one expects various ‘things’ – that is, embedded systems – to connect to the cloud. We are examining security methodologies that can apply both at the embedded systems level and the cloud level,” Dr. Etzkorn explains. “I teach a new course on cloud computing, so Dr. Kim and I are working mainly on the cloud portion, whereas Dr. Coe, Dr. Kulick, and Dr. Milenkovic are working more on the embedded side.”

Dialectric can be used also in automobiles, which belong to the types of embedded systems. This area of the research will be covered by Dr. Kim who achieved expertise with automotive computer systems previously at the University of Alaska.

“We hope that this will be the first step in a major cybersecurity research initiative that will benefit students in both our departments and colleges,” explained Dr. Etzkorn. “We have already together submitted multiple additional proposals to government agencies to support other aspects of this research and we intend to continue this effort in searching for additional funds. We also feel that various research projects suitable for doctoral students and Master of Science thesis students will become available from this work.”

The founding director of the UAH’s new Center for Cybersecurity Research and Education, Dr. Tommy Morris, explains that the grant came from an innovative NSA program.

“UAH is recognized as a NSA/DHS Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance (IA)/Cyber Defense (CD) and Research and this grant reinforces our status as one of a small number of universities which are leading the way forward in this field,” Dr. Morris said. “Working with NSA puts UAH students and faculty right at the cutting edge of cybersecurity research. These types of research projects create new technologies and launch careers.”

Cybersecurity is a topic that involves different issues and requires multidisciplinary approaches. Therefore, research needs to find a deal among different fields, such as engineering and computer as well as social sciences and business, as explained Dr. Morris.

“This grant will leverage skills from two colleges,” Dr. Morris added. “The students and faculty working on the project will learn from one another and hopefully develop better solutions because of that cross-pollination.”

Dr. Coe added that the team has positive expectations that the project “will serve as a catalyst for future collaborations within UAH and with industry partners.”

Written by: Pietro Paolo Frigenti