Securing Cyberspace
New UMBC - Northrop Grumman partnership aims to take cybersecurity to a new level.
Military commanders often talk about the need for “situational awareness” — they want to see and track the potential threats facing them, whether they come from planes, ships, troop movements or any other source.
In a traditional conflict, that awareness might come from a giant digital map hanging in a darkened command center. But as the country faces a growing range of threats to the computers and networks that make these maps and other vital technologies possible, it becomes difficult to imagine what a picture to track them would even look like.
“Cyberspace is a domain that was entirely created by humans,” says Chris Valentino ’02, MS ’05, information systems. “There’s no good way to visualize it and to see where the threats are.”
Not yet, anyway. A new partnership between UMBC and the Northrop Grumman Corporation is designed to accelerate the development of this and other types of technology that will help protect the country from these growing cyber threats.
“We want to open the aperture to new technologies and ideas,” explains Valentino, a director of cybersecurity at Northrop Grumman. “We want this partnership to help companies find out-of-the-box solutions that will make our nation more secure.”
