Collaborative Research: SaTC: CORE: Medium: Transforming Intrusion Detection Through Automated Cross-Organization Queries

NSF Award Search · 01002425DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT · $147,097 · view on nsf.gov ↗

Abstract

The groundswell of available data and computation power to learn from data has produced advanced automation across many domains, but cybersecurity has lagged these trends. Cybersecurity data sharing comes primarily in the form of indicators of compromise (IoCs) that describe patterns or artifacts that have already been classified as associated with malicious activity. Identifying malicious activity and distilling one or more IoCs from it, however, is often a manual process that is slowed and/or decayed by the siloed viewpoints of different organizations. This project's broader significance and importance are in pioneering a new approach to organizational data sharing that prioritizes support for targeted queries on the operational states of other organizations to overcome these siloed viewpoints. This project's novelties are in identifying opportunities for organizations to diagnose events by posing and responding to such queries and in developing technologies to do so, while simultaneously protecting operational privacy for the organizations. The technical core of this project is a new approach to intrusion detection enabled by cross-organization queries, supported by specialized cryptographic protocols to pose queries and receive responses in a way that minimizes collateral leakage. The project also contributes novel mechanisms to motivate participation in these data exchanges, and to prioritize the partners to which queries should be posed to receive the highest-q

Key facts

NSF award ID
2425893
Awardee
University of Southern California (CA)
SAM.gov UEI
G88KLJR3KYT5
PI
Michael P Collins
Primary program
01002425DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
All programs
SaTC: Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace, MEDIUM PROJECT
Estimated total
$147,097
Funds obligated
$147,097
Transaction type
Continuing Grant
Period
06/15/2025 → 05/31/2029