University gets security funding for data transfer research

The University of Texas at San Antonio will get a federal research grant to test security models that safeguard the transfer of data among government agencies.

The five-year $7.5 million grant was awarded by the Department of Defense Multi University Research Initiative (MURI).

The research will be conducted in partnership with the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, Purdue University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Michigan, and the University of Texas at Dallas.

Ravi Sandhu, executive director of the University of Texas at San Antonio's Institute for Cyber Security will lead the research team with Shouhuai Xu, an assistant professor of computer science in the UTSA Department of Computer Science.

"In this post 9/11 era, we need to move from the doctrine of a 'need to know' policy of information gathering to a more proactive one of 'need to share', where people are readily seeking and receiving information," Sandhu said in a statement.

The institute was created in June 2007 with a $3.5 million grant from the state of Texas. The university said it hoped the grant would help attract the Air Force's Cyber Command center.