Protecting the grid

Feb 14 - McClatchy-Tribune Content Agency, LLC - Grayson Schmidt Ames Tribune, Iowa

In an attempt to protect their simulated cities from a cyber attack, 15 teams from around Iowa and the Midwest faced off Saturday in the country's first Cyber-Physical System Cyber Defense Competition at Iowa State University.

According to ISU Professor and Information Assurance Center Director Doug Jacobson, the university has been holding Cyber Defense Competitions for 10 years. Previous competitions simply dealt with protecting computer networks from hackers, but this year, Jacobson said, the stakes are higher, and students must also protect water systems and the physical infrastructure of the grid.

"Up until now, all the competitions have focused primarily on protecting standard computing -- websites, logins, credit card information -- what you would think of as normal cyber security," Jacobson said. "This one's different in that they have to still protect that, but also protect a city with power and water."

Of the 15 teams, three are from ISU, and the others are a collective of universities, community colleges, and one team from the Iowa Air National Guard.

Jacobson is a professor of electrical and computer engineering who specializes in cyber security, and the eight-hour competition is his brainchild. The event pits the hackers -- a team of cyber professionals and professors known as the red team -- against the roughly 120 challengers (or the blue team), who are in charge of protecting the grid. Within that blue team, the 15 teams are each given individual "cities" to protect.

"We've got a lot of things that rely on the network or rely on computers to work. Power, water, transportation, so on and so forth, all rely on computers and they are becoming targets for attackers," Jacobson said. "The idea here is to get students to understand that it's not just protecting a website. You're job may be to keep the lights on, or the water on, or keep the planes in the air."

ISU graduate student Jeffrey Neel has been involved with the competition since his freshman year, and said that it helped solidify his choice to major in computer engineering as an undergrad, and pursue information assurance as a graduate student.

"I came here not really sure of what I wanted to do. I started going to the information assurance group and they worked a lot with these competitions, which really got me interested," Neel said. "Right after the first few competitions, I knew this was something I wanted to do as a career."

Neel is the competition director who oversees everything involving the blue team. After originally competing in the competitions as an undergrad, he decided to remain actively involved in graduate school. He said he has seen dramatic change in the competition since his freshman year, which given the advancements in technology over the past five years, he said those changes make sense.

"We've been constantly getting more outreach to external sponsors, and there are more and more companies that are interested in the Cyber Defense Competition and seeing what we are doing here (at ISU)," Neel said. "All the competitions we do are relevant (to what's going on in the world). We design all the scenarios around the machines used in the industry."

For Jacobson, it is hard to say what additions or alterations are going to be made for next year's competition, but he did say with the ever-changing world of technology, it's a pretty easy bet that next year's Cyber Defense Competition will change as the world does.

Jacobson also pointed out that even though it is listed as a competition with a point system and a winner, the main goal is to get students experience with situations like this and increase the amount cyber defense problem solvers, especially at Iowa State.

"It's a sense of pride for Iowa State. There's a lot of research going on at Iowa State in the realm of cyber-physical security," Jacobson said. "Iowa State is trying to stand itself up as a national leader in cyber-physical security in general, and this is just one additional component to that."

amestrib.com

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