- happyeclair / Foter / CC BY-SA
The UD Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate has awarded a contract to the University of Delaware to develop technology to combat one form of cyber attack more difficult to carry out.
The $1.9 million project targets Distributed Denial of Service attacks at data centers.
The grant, entitled “Ensuring Energy and Power Safety in Data Centers” was awarded through Broad Agency Announcement HSHQDC-14-R- B00017 will become part of the DHS S&T Cyber Security Division’s larger Distributed Denial of Service Defenses (DDoSD) program.
A DDoS attack might disrupt an organization’s website and temporarily block a consumer’s ability to access the site. A more strategic attack makes a key resource inaccessible during a critical period.
DDoS attacks have been conducted against financial institutions, news organizations, providers of internet security resources, and government agencies. Any organization that relies on network resources is considered a potential target.
“Cyber threats are constantly changing,” said DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology Dr. Reginald Brothers. “S&T is working to develop innovative solutions to help keep pace with these changes and defend against cyber threats like DDoS attacks.”
The University of Delaware project aims to address new types of malicious attacks that target data centers. The attacks differ from conventional DDoS. Instead of flooding the victim servers, their traffic behaviors will mimic those of normal users. However, data centers may see more serious damage from these attacks than conventional DDoS attacks since the goal is to create energy, power, and thermal emergencies. Banks of servers at data centers generate large amounts of heat and require large cooling systems.
According to a Homeland Security release, systems will be better secured by using accumulated data analytics; these will allow operators to more accurately track irregularities, along with changes in energy consumption per client, server power consumption, and the relation to increases in server temperature.
