CICI: UCSS: Securing Research Cyberinfrastructures with Zero Trust and Agentic AI

NSF Award Search · 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT · $599,958 · view on nsf.gov ↗

Abstract

Research Cyberinfrastructure (RCI) supports cutting-edge scientific projects benefitting individuals, the environment, national security, and economic competitiveness. Despite the potential benefits, recent attacks have compromised the integrity of scientific data and resources such as computing time and network bandwidth, ultimately affecting the public’s confidence in scientific results. As a response, countermeasures have been proposed based on Zero Trust (ZT), an emerging paradigm calling for the continuous evaluation and enforcement of authorization policies, which protect RCIs by restricting access to sensitive data and resources. However, it is difficult for practitioners of RCIs, namely, administrators, researchers, and students, to correctly write, evaluate, and enforce the many different authorization policies needed to provide effective cyber-protections. To address these challenges, this project develops ZT-Agents, which leverage Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to provide next-generation cyber-protections for RCIs, ultimately pursuing the following goals: (i) Advancing the state-of-the-art in cyber-protections by developing AI agents for continuous evaluation and enforcement of authorization policies for RCIs; (ii) Enabling practitioners to conveniently learn and retrofit Agentic AI-augmented authorization technologies for RCIs, balancing security, usability, and the needs of research-driven enterprises; (iii) Providing evidence-backed technical

Key facts

NSF award ID
2613459
Awardee
Texas A&M University Corpus Christi (TX)
SAM.gov UEI
Y3RET2XN41S5
PI
Carlos E Rubio-Medrano
Primary program
01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
All programs
Artificial Intelligence (AI), CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE
Estimated total
$599,958
Funds obligated
$599,958
Transaction type
Standard Grant
Period
08/01/2026 → 07/31/2029