CfIA Advancing Cybersecurity Research

UofM’s Center for Information Assurance Receives $1M as part of DHS grant to NCPC.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)/Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded an $8M grant to the National Cybersecurity Preparedness Consortium NCPC (nationalcpc.org) and the University of Memphis is a core member as one of the five universities included in the National Cybersecurity Preparedness Consortium.

The NCPC is the premier cybersecurity consortium in the nation. Since 2004, in partnership with DHS/FEMA, the individual members of the NCPC have developed and delivered DHS/FEMA certified online and face-to-face training courses to various states, counties, local jurisdictions and critical infrastructure components nationwide addressing cybersecurity and cyber terrorism concerns. In addition to the University of Memphis, other university partners in the consortium include: the Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security (CIAS) at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA); The Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) National Emergency Response and Recovery Training Center (NERRTC); Norwich University (NU); and The University of Arkansas Criminal Justice Institute (CJI).

As part of this grant, the University of Memphis’s Center for Information Assurance (CfIA) received $1M grant for three years to conduct a project titled “Cybersecurity Issues with Operational Technology and Distributed Energy Resources”.  Dr Mohd. Hasan Ali, associate professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and associate director of the center, will serve as the Principal Investigator (PI). Dr. Dipankar Dasgupta, Hill Professor in Cybersecurity and CfIA center director, will serve as the co-PI on this project. 

The overall goal of the project is to design and develop cybersecurity-related education and training for operation technology (OT) and distributed energy resources (DERs) in order to address the technical needs of future workforce and industry professionals in various sectors. Moreover, this project aims to develop an outreach program that will demonstrate in-person hands-on exercises and experiments. The hands-on activities will cover topics from security in OT and DER which will also be introduced in some related university classes for pilot testing. This is important for state and local professionals and employees in specific sectors to transition theory to practice dealing with cybersecurity challenges.

Hasan Ali stated, "This project will help participants understand different adversarial attacks on cyber-enabled Operational Technologies and distributed energy resources and various mitigation tools and techniques. Participants will be able to understand the need to focus on safety and reliability in addition to confidentiality and accessibility. Moreover, they will learn the best security monitoring and protection for industrial internet-of-things (IoTs) and OT interfaces and will be able to put theory into practice and apply their knowledge into real-world settings and perform tasks that would be relevant to future jobs."

For more information on this research, contact Hasan Ali at mhali@memphis.edu.