Smith joins bid to thwart cyberattacks

April 12, 2005|Associated Press

BERKELEY, Calif. -- Smith College in Northampton, Mass., will be among a consortium of schools led by the University of California, Berkeley in an effort to keep the nation's computer data safe from cyberattack.

The announcement yesterday by the National Science Foundation was made after several security breaches -- two of them at UC Berkeley -- that have dramatized the vulnerability of a society that increasingly entrusts its secrets to computers.

The idea is to look at ways to build more secure systems before a disaster along the lines of an ''electronic Pearl Harbor," said S. Shankar Sastry, the UC Berkeley professor who will be principal investigator and director of the new center.

The new center, called TRUST, or the Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology, is expected to receive nearly $19 million over five years, with the possibility of a 5-year extension after that. TRUST is one of two NSF Science and Technology Centers to be funded this year. The second, centered at the University of Kansas, will study how the balance of mass in the polar ice sheets may affect sea level.

In addition to Smith, Berkeley will be joined by Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, Mills College, San Jose State University, Stanford University, and Vanderbilt University.

A number of businesses also will be affiliated with the project, including Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Symantec.

TRUST researchers will be looking at developing technology that will help organizations -- public and private -- build secure information systems. Beyond thwarting cyberthieves, they also will look at ways to keep systems running even when being struck, a concept known as ''degrading gracefully under attack," said Sastry, who is a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences.