Cyber Security

Cyber security breaches are too frequently making headlines across the globe, with even the most powerful industries falling prey to hackers. The key to preventing cyber attacks begins with education – developing a workforce capable of defending computing resources while increasing cyber security vigilance.

The faculty in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in the College of Engineering and Computing at the University of South Carolina (USC) is leading the way for information assurance research and education.
Since 2000, the department has offered cyber security education and performed nationally recognized research.
The CEC also host the Center for Information Assurance Engineering (CIAE). We are South Carolina's only higher education institution designated as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education by the National Security Agency (NSA).

CIAE Mission

Promote information security awareness
Offer high quality education and research in security
Foster collaboration between academia, industry and government.

Research

CIAE faculty and students are working in a broad spectrum of security topics and issues including the following:

Securing data and applications
Detecting attempts to compromise network and information security
Assessing the vulnerability of information systems
Securing wired and relies networks
Defending against offensive cyber operations

Secure Information Management

Developing methods for secure information systems centered on Web-enabled data management, sharing, and applications

Access control models for web data and metadata
Inference and covert channel analysis for open source intelligence
Offensive and defensive activities
Adaptable security policy composition for Service Oriented Architecture and cloud computing
Correctness and reliability of Web Service Transaction processing

Cyber Damage Estimation and Response

Developing metrics that can predict our nation's vulnerability to cyber attacks;
economic, social, and legal impacts

Social vulnerability and damage assessment models for cyber attacks
Public health inspired cyber security preventive approach
National critical infrastructure protection
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems; cyber attacks against Programmable Logic Controllers
Automated and adaptable response capabilities

Secure Network-Level Protocol Implementation and Development

Intrusion detection by modeling a network's health as complementary views of the network's state and discovering anomalies and attack signatures
Wireless network security protocols
Cloud security involving authentication, integrity, privacy, and availability
Certificate privacy by new protocols to allow hiding a user's identity

Reliable Wireless Communication

Investigating the main threats to the reliability of wireless communication

Jammer localization using network topology information
Jamming detection within wireless networks, including sensor networks and vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANET)
Jamming-resistant multipath routing protocols that ensure highly available end-to-end packet delivery

Security and Privacy of Embedded Systems

Discovering the security and privacy vulnerabilities of embedded systems and to improve their security

Automobile in-car sensor networks
The security and privacy vulnerabilities of automatic meter reading (AMR), including jamming to protect privacy
Trustworthy analog sensors

User-Friendly Authentication Methods

Inventing authentication methods that require little memorization from users and are difficult to duplicate by attackers
Designing a new authentication method that uses emerging sensors to capture users' behavioral biometrics
Designing a new password scheme that uses text actions to enhance password security against known attacks