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SMU Partners with Krimmeni for Cyber Security Research (CDSA)
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By Bryan Ellenburg
Cloud-enabled cyber security software company Krimmeni Technologies has been tapped by Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, to help research cyber security issues prevalent in connected devices.
SMU’s Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security in the Lyle School of Engineering will work with Krimmeni to look at addressing cyber security problems when it comes to hardware security modules (computing devices meant to safeguard and manage digital keys for authentication).
“Next-generation security requires a multidisciplinary approach to underlying hardware, device-level software and cloud computing architecture to scale and communicate securely with the rich array of devices that are being developed for the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT),” said Fred Chang, director of the Darwin Deason Institute. “We look forward to working with the Krimmeni team on these issues.”
Launched in January, the Darwin Deason Institute brought on Chang — a cyber security expert and former research director at the National Security Agency (NSA) — in 2013.
The Darwin Deason Institute’s stated focus is to develop techniques to prevent and recover from cyber attacks on infrastructure; create software and hardware designs that incorporate security; understand and address issues covering both the psychology and economics behind cyber crime; and employ data mining and machine learning as tools to respond to information security issues.
“Krimmeni is honored to have the depth and experience of Chang’s team working with us,” said Krimmeni CEO David A. Lundgren. “We share a great sense of urgency in defending the massive increase in our collective attack surface that the IoT represents.”
The first project in the Krimmeni research partnership will see Mitchell Thornton, technical director of the Deason Institute and Lyle School professor of computer science and engineering, leading an investigation into mathematically based techniques for addressing cyber security issues.
“The Krimmeni research project involves the application of techniques that provide automated mathematical proofs of correctness for the unique set of security issues arising from the design and implementation of hardware security modules and IoT,” Thornton said. “We are investigating how these techniques can be used to verify security properties of a system that consists of elements of integrated circuit hardware as well as cloud computing resources.”
