DHS S&T Awards 葫芦影业 $2.6M for Cyber Security Research
Principal Investigators are UH Computer Science Faculty
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) awarded a $2.6 million contract to the 葫芦影业 Department of Computer Science to develop technology that will help protect emergency response systems, such as current and next-generation 911 systems, against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. The contract titled 鈥淒DoS Resilient Emergency Dispatch Center鈥� was awarded through and is part of the 鈥檚 larger Distributed Denial of Service Defenses (DDoSD) program.
DDoS attacks are used to render key resources unavailable. A classic DDoS attack might
disrupt an organization鈥檚 website and temporarily block a consumer鈥檚 ability to access
the site. A more strategic attack makes a key resource inaccessible during a critical
period. Prominent DDoS attacks have been conducted against financial institutions,
news organizations, providers of internet security resources, and government agencies.
Any organization that relies on network resources, even an emergency management system,
is considered a potential target, and the current environment offers many advantages
to the attacker.
鈥淥ur nation鈥檚 networks and emergency response systems can become targets for cyber attacks,鈥� said DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology Dr. Reginald Brothers. 鈥淪&T is working to develop novel solutions to counter these threats.鈥�
The emergency dispatch system is a national critical infrastructure whose availability, resilience, and integrity are of paramount importance. The next generation 911 system, NG9-1-1, will enable emergency calls from any wired, wireless, or IP-based device and will also allow multimedia sharing. This evolution may also make NG9-1-1 more vulnerable to different types of existing or new cyber attacks.
Principal investigators Stephen Huang, Omprakash Gnawali and Weidong Larry Shi discuss
plans for the design of the 9-1-1 call center security lab.The 葫芦影业-led research team will be working to develop mitigation
strategies that are low cost, based on open standards, and can significantly strengthen
the resilience of emergency response systems against DDoS attacks. The proposed solution
leverages the cloud computing model by providing on-demand networking and computing
capacities when requests suddenly surge. In addition, the team plans to employ context-based
automated smart interactive response (SIR) to verify the validity of emergency calls.
鈥淎s more systems become connected to and reliant upon the Internet, these systems also become vulnerable to Distributed Denial of Service attacks,鈥� said Dr. Dan Massey, Cyber Security Division DDoSD Program Manager. 鈥淭hrough efforts like the University of Houston led project, DHS S&T Cyber Security Division is helping to develop defenses for critical systems such as Next Generation 9-1-1 systems.鈥�
With the success of launching this R&D project, S&T looks forward to securing the nation鈥檚 networks by anticipating and defending against DDoS attacks.
- News Release Courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security Science & Technology Press Office