Outreach

Ohio Cyber Range Institute

The University of Cincinnati’s distinct multidisciplinary approach to cybersecurity anchors on a robust coordination between three core units: the Departments of Political Science, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the School of Information Technology. This leadership core is advancing significant curricular innovation across the campus, research synergies that align with Digital Futures, and direct impact on US government strategy.

The state of Ohio has created a new model to advance the cybersecurity of its citizens, the state, and the nation. Leveraging the research and educational power of its university and college system in partnership with five state agencies, the state of Ohio has positioned the University of Cincinnati to galvanize the integration of cybersecurity efforts across education, workforce, and economic development missions through the establishment of Ohio Cyber Range Institute (OCRI).

The OCRI is anchored on the distinctive partnership of the three UC units noted above, whose Heads/Directors serve as a combined set of co-directors for the OCRI and Digital Futures-related research. This level of coordination is producing significant outcomes and has shaped how each of the units approaches their own disciplinary orientation to cybersecurity. While most of the nation approaches cybersecurity in silos, UC is positioning its disciplinary expertise within a multidisciplinary context. It is important to note that fundamentally, however, political science, computer science, and information technology are distinct perspectives and are organized as disciplines around different accreditation standards—they ask different questions, employ different methodologies, test different variables, and provide different solutions. Taken together UC has created a unique opportunity: three distinct disciplinary programs informed through coordination that can produce important solution sets for their disciplines, while aggregating toward collective outcomes for the state and nation.

For more information about OCRI, please go to the following website
https://www.ohiocyberrangeinstitute.org/

New NSF – IUCRC on Hardware and Embedded Systems Security and Trust (CHEST) for Cyber Physical Systems In the EECS Department at UC

The electronics industry composes 2.6% of the world’s gross domestic product and currently exceeds $2.0 trillion per year. Since 1994, semiconductor circuits have averaged 16% of the total electronics market, and thus are responsible for approximately $320 billion per year. Counterfeiting and hardware Trojans have impacted over one billion pieces of semiconductor hardware, and it is estimated that 60% of semiconductor hardware is either counterfeited or cloned. Cloning and Trojan detection currently constitutes 11% of overall cyber-security budgets, and Security Intelligence estimates that between 2017 and 2021 cybersecurity spending will exceed $1 trillion. Extrapolating and averaging leads to approximately $22 billion per year currently being spent on hardware and embedded systems security and trust.

The core of today’s electronic systems is based on multi-component integrated circuit technologies that are highly susceptible to malicious modification and tampering throughout their life cycles. Although standardized design methods have been developed, clear routes to integrate protection against tampering into these systems are in their infancy. During the life cycle of an electronic system, untrusted designers, fabricators, testers, and handlers can insert malicious circuits into electronics that can lay dormant until activated either passively or actively causing unwanted behavior. Trust in electronics is critical to U.S. security.

In the Fall 2019, Professor Marty Emmert was successful in getting a NSF-IUCRC grant on Hardware and Embedded Systems Security and Trust for Cyber Physical Systems at UC. This center is a collaboration between UC, the University of Connecticut, the University of Virginia, the University of California-Davis, Northeastern University, and the University of Texas at Dallas. The new center is referred as NSF-IUCRC CHEST and you can learn more about it at the following address:

https://nsfchest.org/

Marty Emmert, director of CHEST, has received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Kentucky and the Air Force Institute of Technology respectively. Subsequently, he received his Ph.D. in computer engineering from the University of Cincinnati. He was a Colonel in the United States Air Force holding various positions including Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) pilot, Combat Communications Reserve Wing Commander, and Associate Director of the AFRL Aerospace Systems Directorate. He is currently a Professor in Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Cincinnati.