The United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) was funding a cybersecurity architecture project by the University of Alabama in Hunstville that could be built into systems that used the Internet of Things (IoT).
The lightweight virtualisation architecture could be used to build cybersecurity into IoT systems in automobiles and industrial control systems, and into large Cloud-based systems. According to a news report on the university’s Website, the project was called Dielectric. The architecture will move the inclusion of cybersecurity features forward, into the design process of the product. The UAH team was funded by a one-year, US $299,622 NSA grant.
The research team included three faculty members from the UAH Electrical and Computer Engineering Department – Dr David Coe, Dr Jeffrey Kulick and Dr Aleksandar Milenkovic – and two faculty members from the UAH Computer Science Department – Dr Letha Etzkorn and Dr Sun-il Kim. This team had previously collaborated on the development of a number of whitepaper and proposal submissions related to cybersecurity and embedded systems.
“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,” said the news report quoting Dr. Etzkorn.
Dr Kim will also research how Dielectric can be used in automobiles, which are basically one more type of embedded system, as he had previous experience with automotive computer systems at the University of Alaska.
Image Credit: University of Alabama