FAIRMONT — With funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a West Virginia University teacher is developing techniques to be able to decrease the threat of cyber attacks.
Jonathan Boyd, assistant professor of chemistry at WVU, is a toxicologist by training, and most of his work focuses on the determination of cellular data and the processes involved. His research involves apoptosis, which is the suicidal process of cells.
He explained that apoptosis typically uses energy and the cell will die in a nice, programmed fashion so that no harm is caused to the organism. Boyd looks at different compounds to induce apoptosis.
Boyd was selected to be a part of the 2009 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Young Faculty Award program. The DARPA grant, with a $300,000 value over two years, is funding his research on “Natural Designs for Network Threat Analysis.”
For quite a while, Boyd has been working on the concept of threat progression with cell signaling networks and linking it to cyber threats. He submitted his proposal to DARPA in early 2009 and was informed in August that he had won the award. Boyd said he and his team at the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences’ C. Eugene Bennett Department of Chemistry began the research wholeheartedly in October.
Assisting Boyd is graduate student Holly Williams; undergraduate students Stan Strawbridge, Amber Cook and Jon Rubenstein; and postdoctoral researcher Xueli Gao. Their research involves using cells, as they relate to apoptosis, to mimic the cyber security threats that might happen.
“There's actually a lot of similarities between cellular systems and information systems as a whole,” Boyd said.
There must be an interaction between the threat and the target, he said. Both cellular and information systems have to have some type of access or penetration, and a specific ability that drives the interactions to occur. The target could be specific or nonspecific. Something alters the normal processes, and depending on how lethal the activity is, the system could be impaired or fail.
The researchers are trying to determine what factors can predict what may happen at a later time. They would like to be able to take some of the cellular networks and transfer them into cyber defense, and in turn create a constant check within the system and enhance the protective abilities, Boyd said.
He said cyber security is an extremely important area of research that is improving and getting more funding because of the threat it presents. Because so much critical infrastructure is now controlled by information systems and networks, any kinks in the systems or actor with malicious intentions could cause havoc in everyday processes, from operating water treatment facilities to street lights.
“Getting a handle on cyber security falls in line with a lot of different research aspects and information systems wouldn't exist without external cooperation among multiple parties,” Boyd said. “And that's very similar to the way a cell operates as well."
Boyd feels honored to receive the DARPA award.
“Ever since I learned about DARPA when I was in graduate school, it’s been a dream of mine to receive DARPA funding,” Boyd said. "It's definitely an honor to be a Young Faculty awardee."
He said DARPA is a far-reaching enterprise that allows faculty to do research that can help form the foundation for solutions for tomorrow’s problems. Boyd’s endeavor is very expensive and complex, and the DARPA funding enables him to fully investigate the topic of interest.
“The money allows us to increase the number of targets that we're looking for and really cast a wider net and a much broader net,” he said.
E-mail Jessica Borders at jborders@timeswv.com.
