CICS News and Announcements

Jan 22, 2007: UNT to host the 2007 Southwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Contest

The University of North Texas will be hosting the 3rd Southwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Contest this year, to be held March 23-25. In this contest, student teams take over a running and configured (or perhaps mis-configured!) network, and must keep systems and services running in the presence of ongoing attacks. In addition, students are given tasks to solve throughout the contest, which involve typical IT tasks such as setting up new accounts, enabling remote access, and installing new software. For more information, see the contest web site.

Sept 5, 2006: Prof. Dantu receives two new grants

Prof. Ram Dantu received two more grants from the National Science Foundation for research projects beginning in September 2006. For the first grant, "Detecting Spam in IP Multimedia Communication Services," Dr. Dantu will collaborate with Dr. Henning Schulzrinne from Columbia University for two years. UNT will receive $131,392 of this $250,000 research grant. Dr. Dantu also received a second NSF grant for $300,000 for a three year research period for "Development of a Flexible Platform for Experimental Research in Secure IP Multimedia Communication Services." More information on these and other projects can be found on the Network Security Laboratory web site.

Aug 16, 2006: Grant received for collaborative information assurance project

The National Science Foundation has awarded $128,106 for the project "Collaborative Project: A Regional Partnership to Build and Strengthen IA in North Texas", with Prof. Tate as PI and Prof. Dantu as co-PI. This project is funded through the NSF Scholarship for Service program, which UNT is eligible for as a result of being designed a "Center for Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education" by the National Security Agency (NSA). Additional funding was provided to the University of Texas at Arlington as part of a regional partnership on this project, and a regional alliance known as ASCENT (Alliance for Secure Computing Education in North Texas) has been created with UNT and UTA as the initial members. More information can be found at the ASCENT web site.

June 27, 2006: Prof. Dantu's research on "top ten" list in Network World

Prof. Ram Dantu's VoIP research has been named one of "the ten most interesting projects" at university and other labs in this article in Network World (Prof. Dantu's research had been previously written about in Network World in an April article). The article notes that "the University of North Texas and others are creating a testbed to explore VoIP spam, denial-of-service attacks and other threats."

April 6, 2006: Prof. Dantu receives grant for VoIP security project

Prof. Dantu has received a grant from the National Science Foundation to lead a multi-university project in VoIP security, and has been highlighted in an NSF press release. This press release quotes Rita Virginia Rodriguez, the NSF program director who oversees the project, as saying, "VoIP security requires immediate attention, and this research addresses a number of critical aspects needed to help prevent imminent threats."

April 25, 2005: Ke Xu receives "Best Dissertaion Award" in College of Engineering

Ke Xu has received the Research Dissertation Award for Research Achievement in Engineering. Dr. Xu graduated in Spring 2004, with Dr. Steve Tate as his major professor. The title of his dissertation was "Mobile Agent Security through Multi-Agent Cryptographic Protocols."

In his research, Dr. Xu showed how mobile code can be protected while on remote hosts in a provably secure way, through innovative use of cryptography and interaction. This work formed the basis for a successful $250,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Dr. Xu now works as part of the security group at NEC Unified Solutions in Irving.

April 18, 2005: UNT students participate in first ever Collegiate Cyberdefense Competition

A team of 8 students, 6 from Computer Science and Engineering and 2 from Business Computer Information Systems, traveled to San Antonio to compete in the first ever Collegiate Cyberdefense Competition. In this contest, students managed a network for a fictional company and earned points for keeping network services up and running while a professional red team was launching attacks. Prof. Tate and Prof. Jensen coached and traveled with the students, and travel expenses were generously paid for by Microsoft.

March 1, 2005: "Digital Crime and Digital Terrorism" book by UNT authors published

Robert W. Taylor, Tory J. Caeti, Kall Loper, Eric J. Fritsch, and John Liederbach of the Department of Criminal Justice have published a book entitled "Digital Crime and Digital Terrorism" through Prentice-Hall (Taylor and Loper are faculty affiliates of CICS). This book explores both technical aspects of digital crime as well as behavioral aspects of computer hackers, virus writers, terrorists and other offenders, and is available in major bookstores and through online booksellers.

Sept. 20, 2004: CICS receives Governor's recognition and Prof. Tate receives UNT National Security Award

UNT and CICS have received a commendation from Governor Rick Perry for CICS's work in cybersecurity. Prof. Tate accepted the commendation at the Fall 2004 faculty convocation, where he received the UNT "National Security Award".

April 13, 2004: NSA designates UNT a "Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education"

The National Security Agency, or NSA, has awarded the University of North Texas with the designation of a "Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education" for its strong computer and information security program. This prestigious designation recognizes UNT's commitment to excellence in information assurance, and places UNT among the top academic programs in computer security in the nation. UNT was among 10 new designees for 2004, bringing the total to 60 institutions nationwide designated as centers of excellence.

For more information, see here.

November 11, 2003: UNT receives NSA certification for computer security courses.

The computer science and security courses offered by the University of North Texas have been certified as a 100% mapping to the Committee on National Security Systems (CNSS) National Standards 4011 (for Information Security Professionals) and 4013 (for Security System Adminstrators). This certification is made by the Information Assurance Courseware Evaluation (IACE) Program, part of the National INFOSEC (Information Security) Education and Training Program administered by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). UNT students successfully completing the required courses will receive certificates demonstrating their qualifications as security professionals.

For more information, see here.