REU Site: Integrative Challenges in Cybersecurity-Deception, Remediation, and Resilient Systems

NSF Award Search · 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT · $464,622 · view on nsf.gov ↗

Abstract

Cybersecurity threats increasingly disrupt critical services such as healthcare, energy, and financial systems, affecting everyday life and national stability. These threats are no longer isolated technical problems; they involve complex interactions among digital systems, human decisions, and organizational responses. This project addresses these challenges by advancing a unified approach to understanding and improving how systems detect, respond to, and recover from cyber incidents. The project's novelties are the integration of intelligent deception techniques, automated system recovery, and human-centered decision analysis into a single, coordinated framework. The project's broader significance and importance are in strengthening the resilience of essential infrastructure, supporting national security, and expanding opportunities for undergraduate students to participate in advanced research. As a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site hosted at the University at Albany, State University of New York, the project combines education with hands-on discovery, contributing to workforce development and promoting scientific progress that benefits society at large. The project develops an interconnected set of research activities that examine cybersecurity from multiple perspectives. It creates adaptive digital environments that interact with attackers and collect detailed behavioral data, enabling deeper understanding of evolving threats. It constructs realistic simulated attack scenarios for industrial control systems to generate high-quality datasets for experimentation and evaluation. It incorporates methods to ensure that artificial intelligence systems used in defense are reliable, transparent, and resistant to misuse. In addition, it analyzes how decisions made by organizations and leaders influence the outcomes of cyber incidents, linking technical events with broader social and strategic factors.These activities are integrated through complementa

Key facts

NSF award ID
2548335
Awardee
SUNY at Albany (NY)
SAM.gov UEI
NHH3T1Z96H29
PI
M Abdullah Canbaz
Primary program
01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
All programs
Artificial Intelligence (AI), GRADUATE INVOLVEMENT, REU SITE-Res Exp for Ugrd Site
Estimated total
$464,622
Funds obligated
$464,622
Transaction type
Standard Grant
Period
10/01/2026 → 09/30/2029