Feds Offer $5 Mil In Grants For Security Research
The Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today gave $5 million in research grants to companies contracting to beef up security around the nation's computer and telecommunications systems. The grants issue from the Critical Infrastructure Protection Grants Program, which funds research on ways to prevent cyber-attack on the nation's most essential networks, such as the electrical grid and the air traffic control system.
"These research grants will make an important down payment toward addressing the many cyber challenges we need to surmount to protect America's critical infrastructures," said Richard Clarke, the Bush administration's national security for critical infrastructure and counter-terrorism at the National Security Council. "We look forward to the technical progress that the awardees will be making."
The new grants were approved in FY2000 and are unrelated to the terrorist attacks on the United States last month.
NIST awarded the nine grants to five companies, three universities and two commercial and academic partnerships. The agency said it received 133 applications - totaling more than $73 million in requests - for the available $5 million in funding.
Morristown, N.J. based Telcordia Technologies was awarded nearly $100,000 to identify vulnerabilities and security dependencies in the telephone network.
The University of Maryland in College Park, Md. received $861,000 to conduct security testing on emerging wireless standards. The University of Pittsburgh received $432,000 to investigate wireless security and network survivability issues.
The University of California, San Diego, received $610,000 to devise novel intrusion detection techniques to fend off network surveillance and denial-of-service attacks.
The University of Tulsa earned $191,000 in NIST grants and another $500,000 from the National Security Agency to study ways to map data, voice and broadband networks in order to develop sophisticated attack management systems for those networks.
Another $775,000 was awarded to Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Inc., Washington State University, and the University of Idaho, in a bid to beef up cyber-security around the electrical power grid.
