NSA Awards $300K Grant for IoT Security
One of the hottest up and coming technologies on the horizon is IoT. The acronym stands for Internet of Things and the term refers to the technology behind organizations that buy or build small, internet connected sensors that report data back into the cloud.
The National Security Administration has taken note of IoT’s rapid rise in popularity. Because of this, the NSA believes that cyber security standards should be developed for the agile platform. Students and professors at the University of Alabama in Huntsville were able to pitch the NSA on their new IoT architecture called Dielectric which is supposed to provided a secured IoT experience for businesses and consumers. As a result of the pitch, the NSA authorized a one time grant to the university to the tune of $299,622.
The University of Alabama in Huntsville was able to assign five of its brightest professors onto the research project. Three of the UAH faculty members come from the Electrical and Computer Engineering department and their names are Dr. David Coe, Dr. Jeffery Kulick and Dr. Aleksandar Milenkovic. The remaining UAH faculty members are from the computer science department and they are Dr. Letha Etzkorn and Dr. Sun-il Kim.
“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,” mentions Dr. Etzkorn.
“I teach a new course on cloud computing, so Dr. Kim and I are working mainly on the cloud portion, whereas Dr. Coe, Dr. Kulick, and Dr. Milenkovic are working more on the embedded side,” adds Etzkorn.
The University of Alabama at Huntsville says that they expect to receive the funds just in time for back to school. The NSA mentions that the nearly $300,000 check that will help fund security research around IoT. The new Internet of Things platform is expected to be used in everything from household items to self driving cars of the future.
