School of Computer and Cyber Sciences faculty awarded $495,000 NSA grant

Augusta University School of Computer and Cyber Sciences faculty members Dr. Gokila Dorai and Dr. Gagan Agrawal have been awarded a $495,000 grant by the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity, a program managed by the National Security Agency. Their project is titled “Cyber Attack Detection using Metadata Analysis and Edge-Based Real-Time Machine Learning on Sensor Data.”

“The results of this project are important for the advancement of Internet of Things security and cyber defense, as compromised IoT devices are becoming more common targets, and we need more efficient/real-time analysis and prevention tools,” said Dorai, an assistant professor in the School of Computer and Cyber Sciences.

Through this grant, Dorai and Agrawal will provide optimized techniques to mitigate threats in the IoT landscape as more cases of compromised devices and cybersecurity issues are being reported. Key objectives of this research project are to provide enhanced, comprehensible solutions for sensor data classification, to offer edge-based threat detection by optimized execution of complex models and to model the IoT threat landscape.

Dorai is excited to mentor and work on this project with domestic graduate students in the new PhD program in Computer and Cyber Sciences.

“This new award from NSA shows our increasing momentum in cybersecurity and privacy,” says Dr. Alex Schwarzmann, dean of the School of Computer and Cyber Sciences. “Awards like these allow us to fund graduate students in our new PhD program. I wish Drs. Dorai and Agrawal success in their research and in mentoring the next generation of cybersecurity scientists and professionals.”