Phase II IUCRC George Mason University: Center for Cybersecurity Analytics and Automation CCAA

网络战已成为国家安全的主要威胁，网络攻击的日益复杂要求创新的分析和自动化能力，以应对高级、持续和不断变化的对手。网络安全分析和自动化中心(CCAA)将通过合作和多学科方法开发一系列此类新能力，涉及三个大学站点以及广泛的行业和政府赞助商。该中心战略的核心是提高感知、决策和弹性方面的最新水平，以便使系统能够支持网络任务，抵御复杂的攻击。CCAA将网络安全、正式建模和数据驱动分析方面的专家聚集在一起，以在多个战线推进网络防御，即(A)使用大规模异类网络人工制品为动态和预测性网络分析制定稳健和可扩展的感知，(B)使用任务要求、安全政策、指南和系统配置创建经证明正确且在操作上安全的防御战略和行动方案的自适应和自主决策，以及(C)使网络和网络物理系统的固有属性具有弹性和灵活性，以实现实时威慑、欺骗和缓解。乔治梅森大学的网站将提供攻击建模、软件安全和随机优化方面的专业知识。该中心的研究将推动针对最复杂威胁的网络防御技术的发展。通过更加注重技术转让，CCAA将使组织能够部署新的工具和分析能力，以有效和高效地保护其系统免受能够绕过传统防御的高级威胁。所有级别的学生都将积极参与研究，并将有足够的机会通过实习和长期的跨站点访问与行业赞助商和其他大学网站接触。还将积极促进本科生、高中生、女学生和代表不足的少数民族的参与。该中心将创建和维护一个中心范围的储存库，以便向中心所有成员提供研究产品，如数据集、代码、工具、实验结果和手稿草稿。储存库将可通过中心的网站(http://www.ccaa-nsf.org/)访问。根据该中心的章程和个别大学或NSF的任何适用要求，这些产品中的几个将提供给更广泛的研究和行业社区。在第二阶段工作的整个过程中，该存储库将得到积极的维护，并将在项目结束后保持在线。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Cyber warfare has become a major threat to national security, and the increasing sophistication of cyber attacks calls for innovative analytical and automation capabilities to face advanced, persistent, and evolving adversaries. The Center for Cybersecurity Analytics and Automation (CCAA) will develop a range of such new capabilities through a collaborative and multidisciplinary approach involving three university sites and a broad range of industry and government sponsors. At the core of the Center's strategy is the goal to advance the state of art in sense-making, decision making, and resilience in order to enable systems to sustain cyber missions against sophisticated attacks. CCAA brings together experts in cybersecurity, formal modeling, and data-driven analytics to advance cyber defense on multiple fronts, namely, (a) robust and scalable sense-making for dynamic and predictive cyber analytics using large-scale heterogeneous cyber artifacts, (b) adaptive and autonomic decision-making for creating defense strategies and courses of action that are provably correct and operationally safe using mission requirements, security policies, guidelines, and system configurations, and (c) making resilience and agility inherent properties of cyber and cyber physical systems to enable real-time deterrence, deception, and mitigation. The George Mason University site will provide expertise in attack modeling, software security, and stochastic optimization. The Center's research will advance the state of the art in cyber defense against the most sophisticated threats. Through an increased focus on technology transfer, CCAA will enable organizations to deploy new tools and analytical capabilities to effectively and efficiently secure their systems against advanced threats capable of circumventing traditional defenses. Students at all levels will be actively involved in the research and will have ample opportunities to engage with industry sponsors and other university sites trough internships and extended cross-site visits. Participation of undergraduate and high school students, female students, and underrepresented minorities will also be actively promoted. The Center will create and maintain a center-wide repository to make research products such as datasets, code, tools, experimental results, and draft manuscripts available to all of the Center's members. The repository will be accessible through the Center's website (http://www.ccaa-nsf.org/ ). Consistent with the Center's bylaws and with any applicable requirements of individual universities or NSF, several of these products will be made available to the broader research and industry communities. The repository will be actively maintained during the entire duration of the Phase II effort, and it will remain online beyond the end of the project.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.