Cybersecurity grantsDHS S&T awards Mobile Technology Security (MTS) research grants

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) on Monday announced a $759,727 cybersecurity Mobile Technology Security (MTS) research and development (R&D) award which will help secure mobile devices for the federal government. The Broad Agency Announcement HSHQDC-14-R-B0015 by the Cyber Security Division awarded the contract to University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) to work on mobile security research in next-generation mobile security management tools.

“Mobile device security is a research priority to accomplish the Department’s mission,” said DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology Dr. Reginald Brothers. “I am proud S&T is taking the lead in developing innovative and affordable solutions to protect the government’s mobile devices.”

S&T notes that the MTS award is a part of the Mobile Device Security (MDS) R&D project which aims to accelerate the adoption of secure mobility by government and private sector organizations. The MDS project is developing R&D technologies in mobile device instrumentation, transactional security methods, mobile security management tools, and mobile device layer protection.

The goal of the next-generation mobile security management tools project is to look at innovative technology solutions which protect the operating layer of the mobile device, but also incorporate user identities and actions to protect against vulnerabilities. UNC Charlotte will be implementing a mobile security management system called Theseus. This software-based framework and Web-based application will monitor usage patterns across mobile devices aiming to reduce security vulnerabilities and threats for the Department. 

“Research in next-generation mobile security management tools will provide new technologies that will enable organizations to better understand the connection between threats and usage patterns within the mobile device.” said Cyber Security Division MDS Program Manager Vincent Sritapan. “And with these new technologies we can accelerate the adoption of secure mobility for the Department to help us succeed in our many missions.”

S&T says that the successful launch of this R&D project will enable it to provide cutting-edge, secure technologies to DHS, government, and enterprising organizations to help create a secure and seamless mobile experience.

Last week S&T announced a $576,000 cybersecurity Mobile Technology Security (MTS) research and development (R&D) award by the Cyber Security Division to Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey to begin R&D in mobile transactional security methods.

Rutgers University will be designing, developing, and deploying a data-protection architecture for mobile operating systems that uses information flow tracking to isolate data rather than isolating execution environments and applications. The architecture will be a component in a system called “SWIRLS,” which invokes a reference to the information flows in the device. In the SWIRLS system, data will be tagged based on its security context and data mixing between different security contexts will be controlled by data owner-specified policies. The result will be an infrastructure with several capabilities to simplify the trustworthy usage of mobile phones that will manage, but allow access to, data with different security requirements through the same applications without fear of any malicious or inadvertent data leakage.