A team of researchers from the University of Arizona, Navajo Technical University, and Argonne National Laboratory is working with researchers at Howard University in the nation’s capital to explore how smart electronic devices respond to cyber-security threats similar to how a person will snatch their hands away from a hot stove.
According to the project’s principal investigator at Howard University, the team is developing cyber-security models inspired by human biological systems.
Danda Rawat, who serves as an associate professor in Howard’s Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, said the three-year, $3 million grant from the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will grow The Partnership for Proactive Cybersecurity Training, a cyber-security research project based on human biological system-enabled machine learning models.
The NNSA is a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy responsible for enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science. NNSA maintains and enhances the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile without nuclear explosive testing, provides the U.S. Navy with safe and effective nuclear propulsion and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the United States and abroad.
“I felt we could learn about how the body protects us by reacting to threats and maybe apply it to cyber by building a ‘cyber immune system,'” said Salim Hariri, an electrical and computer engineering professor at the University of Arizona (UA) and the project’s principal investigator. “We’re trying to build these abilities where, when somebody attacks your computer, these measures can detect the attack and act on it before you’re even aware something is compromised.”
UA researchers say developing a form of cyber-security inspired by these human biological systems that detect and address threats in their earliest stages will also offer training and research opportunities to students from underrepresented backgrounds.
Navajo Technical College, which began as the Navajo Skill Center in 1979 to meet the immediate needs of an unemployed population in the Navajo Nation, is providing a unique balance between science and technology and culture and tradition.
Scientists and engineers at Argonne National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary science, and engineering research center, will work in concert with the University of Arizona, Howard University, and Navajo Technical College. Argonne leverages its Chicago-area location to lead discovery and to power innovation from high-energy physics and materials science to biology and advanced computer science.
The grant aims not only to improve the science and engineering of cyber-security by developing new cyber defense solutions but also to train students – especially women and underrepresented minority groups – to become highly skilled members of the cyber-security workforce.
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