SYSTEMS

Iowa State University launched a U.S. Department of Justice funded test lab designed to simulate, investigate and recreate cyber attacks over the Internet. Dubbed ISEAGE, for Internet-Simulation Event and Attack Generation Environment, the lab is the brainchild of Dr. Doug Jacobson, a professor of computer engineering at Iowa State University and co-founder and CTO of Palisade Systems, a provider of content security appliances. ISEAGE's seed funding came from a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice. ISEAGE is the first research lab to fully and accurately recreate any cyber attack at any point on the Internet by simulating the complexity of an attack in the context of its total environment. Before ISEAGE, government and private sector security professionals used outdated testing environments that oversimplified the threat, because they were unable to recreate the true breadth of the Internet, and all the network activities occurring during a cyber attack. The increased accuracy of ISEAGE will improve understanding of attack characteristics and provide a better assessment of how security systems handle attacks. "As cyber attacks have become more sophisticated, traditional methods for testing and understanding the attacks haven't kept pace," said Dr. Doug Jacobson. "Until now, researchers were unable to model the true complexities of real world Internet attacks. ISEAGE recreates Internet traffic and everything involved in a large or small-scale attack. Our simulations will generate valuable data and best practice recommendations that will allow computer security professionals, law enforcement officials and the computer security industry to develop and deploy more robust cyber defenses." Palisade Systems has donated several PacketSure(TM) appliances, which will be used to monitor and understand what protocols and applications are being employed during an Internet attack. PacketSure provides a real time picture of network activity usage while an attack is in progress. PacketSure's granular reporting and forensic tools allow ISEAGE researchers to study specific hacking exploits against computers on a network. "The more the government and private sectors understand about the effects a cyber attack has on their networks, the better prepared they'll be to defend against a future attack," said Kurt Shedenhelm, CEO of Palisade Systems. "We're pleased to support the ISEAGE lab with products and technical assistance, because the research findings generated by the effort will help improve computer security best practices. The ISEAGE test bed also serves as a great demonstration of PacketSure's unique deep packet inspection technology, which allows our customers to prevent breaches of their classified and sensitive data."