ACADEMIA

Mississippi State University is receiving nearly $800,000 from the National Science Foundation to help protect networked computer systems and other critical national infrastructures against the threat of cyber attacks. The Cyber Trust grant of $793,156 from the NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering will enable the university's Center for Computer Security Research to strengthen and expand its work in the field. "This new award is a tremendous achievement for MSU's computer security center," said Colin Scanes, MSU vice president of research and graduate studies. Ray Vaughn, a computer science and engineering professor who directs the center, noted, "This is a highly competitive award that we believe went to only about 10 percent of those submitting proposals. "The funding will allow us to purchase additional hardware infrastructure that we need to continue our research into security and reliability of high-performance computing systems," he added. "And most importantly, it will fund four doctoral student graduate research assistants for the three-year project duration." The MSU center has collected more than $7 million in external funding since its creation six years ago, Vaughn said. The NSF grant is effective Oct. 1. The NSF issued a solicitation for Cyber Trust proposals earlier this year as part of a $30 million national program designed to promote research into more dependable, accountable and secure computer and network systems. "The risks of identity theft, e-mail viruses, denial-of-service attacks, system glitches, and other online hazards often make the average person's reliance on computer systems more of a leap of faith than a bond of trust," said NSF program director Carl Landwehr. "People need computer systems they can rely on." NSF senior adviser Eugene H. Spafford of Purdue University noted interconnected computer systems are part of the nation's critical infrastructure — as well as part of people's homes, cars and offices. The goal of Cyber Trust research, he said, is to "make these systems and their successors less vulnerable to attacks."