Department of Computer Science
The University of Texas at Dallas
Faculty:
1. Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham (Director, Cyber Security and Emergency Preparedness Institute)
2. Dr. E. Douglas Harris (Executive Director, CyberSecurity and Emergency Preparedness Institute)
3. Dr. Latifur Khan (Director, UTD Database Lab)
4. Dr. Murat Kantarcioglu (Assistant Professor at UtDallas)
PostDoc:
1. Introduction
Our research is proceeding in three main areas:
We describe our goals in each area. More details of our papers and progress of our students will be given shortly.
2. Description of Our Research
Area 1: Assured Information Sharing:
In the area of assured information sharing, the goal is for organizations to share data and at the same time enforce policies. We are investigating confidentiality, privacy, trust, integrity, provenance, standards and infrastructure aspects. In particular, we are examining three scenarios. In the first scenario we assume that the partners of a coalition are trustworthy (e.g, US, UK, Australia). However each partner may want to enforce various security policies. We are investigating the use of Sandhu’s RBAC and UCON policies for such a scenario, carrying out data mining and conducting experimental studies as to the amount of information that is lost by enforcing policies. We are also investigating ways to transfer our technologies to programs such as DoD’s NCES (Network Centric Enterprise Services)
In the second scenario, we assume that the partners are semi-trustworthy. In this case, we want to play games with the partners and extract as much information as possible without giving out information about ourselves. We are using results from game theory to formulate strategies for such a scenario and have obtained some interesting simulation results. In the third scenario we assume that the partners are untrustworthy. Here, we apply data mining to defend our systems from virus and worms and at the same time try to probe into our partners systems, We are examining the use of honey pot technologies and are conducting both defensive and offensive information operations.
In addition to the above areas of focus we are conducting complementary research including privacy preserving data mining, trust management and negotiation, secure semantic web, data provenance man-agement, real-time dependable data management, risk-based access control applying markov models, grid-based infrastructures, and secure ERP systems for coalition data sharing.
| Project Name |
Researcher |
| Trustworthy partners experimentation | Dilsad Cavus and Dr. Mamoun |
| Semi trustworthy partners and game theory | Ryan Layfield |
| Untrustworthy partners and worm detection | Mehdi (student of Prof. Khan) |
| Agent-based Trust management | Srinivasan Iyer |
| Peer-to-peer trust management | Nathalie Tsybulnik |
| Dependable infrastructure and data provenance | Jungin Kim |
| Privacy preserving data mining | Li Liu (co-supervising with Prof. Murat) |
| Risk-based access control and data sharing | Dr.Ebru Celikel |
| ERP Security | Wei-She |
| Extended Role Based Access Control for ERP Security | Srinivasan Iyer |
| Grid Security and web Services | Jianmin Zhu |
Area 2: Secure Geospatial Data Management:
In the area of secure geospatial data management, we are developing technologies for geospatial semantic web and data mining. We are specifying extensions to GML for access control policies as well as devel-oping ontologies for geospatial data. Using these ontologies we are conducting data mining. In addition, we are also developing geospatial web services. Finally we are developing a new language called GRDF (Geospatial Resource Description Framework) and Secure GRDF for a geospatial semantic web. While we are developing various pieces of technologies, our goal is to work through standards organizations such as OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) and corporations such as Raytheon to transfer our research to standards and operational programs. We are members of both OGC and USGIF. We are also members of UTD’s Geosciences program.
| Project Name |
Researcher |
| Geospatial semantic web and web services | Ganesh Subbiah |
| Secure geospatial web services | Ashraful Alam |
| Geospatial data management for emergency preparedness | Pavan chitumalla (co-supervising with Prof. Harris) |
| Geospatial data mining | Dr. Chuan Li |
Area 3: Surveillance/Biometrics/Sensor/RFID:
In the area of surveillance and biometrics our goal is to develop technologies for detecting suspicious events as well as to maintain privacy. We developed a surveillance system to detect suspicious events. We identified normal events and used data mining techniques determined whether an event is suspicious. We are investigating the use of encryption techniques to ensure privacy of the individuals. Finally we developed access control models for surveillance data.
In the area of biometrics, we are developing technologies to support our surveillance work including novel algorithms for face recognition and fingerprint detection. In the areas of RFID, our goal is to manage the various RFID tags. Essentially we are designing a system that manages these tags that may migrate and ensures security and privacy. We are also investigating identity assurance and in particular federated identity management. We have Masters level students conducting research and simulation studies in secure sensor networks.
| Project Name |
Researcher |
| Suspicious event detection: | Gal Lavee (already Graduated) |
| Privacy preserving surveillance | Sai Chaitanya |
| Automatic face recognition and RFID technologies | Parveen Pallabi |
| Fingerprinting | Abinandhan Chandrasekaran |
| Data mining and machine learning for biometrics | Kathryn Bean (co-supervising with Prof. Bereg) |
| Sensor networks and simulation | Vibha Sethi |
Several journal publications with students and colleagues including in IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Very Large Database Journal, Computer Systems Science and Engineering, Mul-timedia Tools; and Conferences including ACM SACMAT, IEEE ISORC, and IFIP Data Security. In addition, In addition, keynote presentations in USA, UK and Singapore at major research conferences have been given on our research.