With cyber and the physical merging in new exciting ways, hybrid forms often called Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are giving rise to the new Internet of Things (IOT). These systems have unique characteristics and vulnerabilities that must be studied to make sure that they are reliable, secure, and maintain individuals’ privacy.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) www.nsf.gov in partnership with Intel Corporation www.intel.com on August 28, 2015, announced two new grants totaling $6 million to enable research teams to study the solutions needed to address the security and privacy of CPS.
These grants will provide an understanding on the broader socioeconomic factors that influence CPS security and privacy. The new program extends NSF’s investments in research on CPS which has totaled more than $200 million in the past five years.
Both NSF and Intel will jointly design a solicitation, select projects, develop an open collaborative intellectual property agreement, and develop a management plan to enable information exchange between faculty, students, and industry researchers.
“Rapidly increasing incorporation of networked computation into everything in our homes to hospitals to transportation systems can dramatically increase the adverse consequences of poor cybersecurity,” according to Philip Levis. He leads one of the new grant projects with funding for $200,000 at Stanford. The Levis team will investigate encryption frameworks for testing and protecting networked infrastructure.
The second project led by Insup Lee was awarded $375,000 to enable a team at the University of Pennsylvania to study how to provide safer, more secure, and privacy-preserving CPS. The team is going to develop methods to prevent attacks on the physical environment and cyberspace.