CSC News

Ning and Young Collaborate on Cyber Situation Awareness Research

Drs. Peng Ning and R. Michael Young, associate professors of computer science at NC State University, have been awarded $979,463 by the Army Research Office/Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (ARO MURI) to support their research proposal titled “Computer-aided Human Centric Cyber Situation Awareness.”

The award will run from September 17, 2009 to September 16, 2014.

This is a collaborative project led by Penn State University involving NC State University, University of Maryland, Carnegie Mellon University, George Mason University, and Arizona State University.  The total amount of the award is $6.25M.

Abstract - Situation Awareness (SA) is a process highly dependent on the analystor operator who is attempting to defend either a physical attack (e.g., missile attack) or a cyber attack. That is, SA is ultimately a mental process of human beings. In this project we will develop an integrated end-to-end (spanning the whole “life cycle”) cyber SA solution to fill the gap between machine information processing and analysts’ mental processes. Our bridging innovations include adding the bridges or “missing links” between the analysts’ mental processes and existing machine level attack/intrusion analysis tools; between human-comprehensible situation representation and algorithmic data structures; between brain-side decision making and machine-side data aggregation; and between uncertainty/risk management and largely deterministic machine state transitions. Our solution adds the new algorithms and techniques that are needed for the machine SA system to work in concert with the human SA system. Our solution also integrates situation recognition, impact assessment, causality analysis, trend analysis, and assessment of system assurance. The NCSU team will focus on the development of multi-level information fusion in the cyber world, VM-based automated vulnerability diagnosis of unknown cyber vulnerabilities, and application of video game technology to bridge the gap between the cyber and the human worlds.

For more information on Dr. Ning, click here.

For more information on Dr. Young, click here.

~coates~