Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

DHS puts weight behind USC "mini-Internet" security testbed

The University of Southern California has signed a 5-year, $16 million contract with the Department of Homeland Security to expand USC's DETERlab "mini-Internet" security testbed.

The government funding will support a new project dubbed DETECT that will feature advanced cyber security techniques and tools.

DETERlab (cyber-DEfense Technology Experimental Research laboratory) boasts a 400-node network divvied up between USC's Information Sciences Institute and UC Berkeley that enables researchers to examine the impact of malware and other security threats without messing with the real Internet. The lab uses the Emulab cluster testbed software developed at the University of Utah. Dell servers, as well as Cisco and HP switches, are among the hardware underpinnings of DETERlab. 

LAB TOUR: 10 really cool university networking labs 

A big push with the DETECT project will be to involve more researchers from around the world, and to interconnect with other security labs worldwide, including federal security research centers.DETERlab, which received initial funding in 2003, is also used by hundreds of students at 10 schools for class work.

Projects that have been run on DETERlab range from a 10,000-node botnet experiment to the University of Oregon's "Behavior-based Frameworks for Detecting Internet Worms."

Funding for the security research effort comes at a time when network security threats are exploding. Report after report points to organizations having their IT security compromised, such as a recent survey in which two-thirds of companies with 5,000-plus employees said they had been hit with at least one successful intrusion last year.

Word of the DETECT project funding comes on the heels of last week's groundbreaking for a $1.2 billion data center funded by the U.S. government to support data analyzation and security efforts by the National Security Agency and DHS, among other government outfits. 

DETECT Bob Brown on Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon, and his AlphaDoggs network research blog.

Read more about wide area network in Network World's Wide Area Network section.

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: AB, Alpha, Cisco, Dell, Dell Computer, etwork, Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, HP, LAN, National Security Agency, NSA, StumbleUpon, USC
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: anti-malware, dell, DETERlab, security, University of Southern California
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Closing the print security gap - The market landscape for print security
    Today, many organisations continue to rely on printing to support business processes, particularly in the public sector, finance industry and legal profession. Whilst MFPs and printers have improved business productivity, they pose the same security risk as any networked device if left unprotected. With reported data breaches on the rise and growing industry and regulatory requirements around information security, businesses may suffer financial and reputational damage if they ignore the risks of unsecured printing. Read more.
    Learn more »
  • Five Things You Need to Know About Your Users Before You Deploy Business Intelligence
    In our years of experience working with companies of all types and sizes to design and deploy business intelligence systems, we’ve learned that there are five key things you need to know about your users before you roll out related technologies to them. In this paper, we will discuss these five things, as well as their implications.
    Learn more »
  • Seven SOA Practices to Unlock Business Value
    The fact is that companies are increasingly using SOA to gain competitive business advantage. Distilled down to seven essential SOA practices, the following list enables IT professionals to tightly align SOA investments with their organization’s business priorities. Using these practices can help with driving competitive advantage and adding measurable business value...and that’s a sure way for IT pros to win recognition and ongoing support within their companies.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments