Cybersecurity is now one of the major national security problems facing the United States, and President Barack Obama has made protecting the country's digital infrastructure a top priority for his administration.
"Protecting our nation's computing systems that control critical cyber infrastructure is crucial," said Dr. Fred Chang, lead investigator and director of the CIAS. "The partnership with Raytheon is designed to allow us to grow and expand to address the rapidly changing problems in cybersecurity with a great deal of agility and flexibility."
Raytheon will provide funding over the next 10 years for CIAS faculty working on technically challenging computer security and information assurance projects.
"It is impossible to defend against every conceivable threat without the great innovations of academia," said Dr. J Smart, chief technology director for Raytheon's Intelligence and Information Systems business. "By partnering with The University of Texas at Austin, Raytheon will tap into some of the best and brightest minds to help design security capabilities for business and government customers and develop new technologies to protect against high-target threats."
The 21 faculty members in the CIAS, a research unit in the Department of Computer Science, bring significant technical knowledge specific to cybersecurity. They are addressing increasingly critical issues such as privacy, password cracking, network security, intrusion detection, verification and wireless networking.
Raytheon has more than 30 years of experience in cybersecurity, information operations and information assurance. From vulnerability assessments to information assurance, monitoring and traffic analysis to information operations, Raytheon's integrated cybersecurity solutions safeguard mission-critical systems against the widest range of internal and external threats. Raytheon's end-to-end offensive and defensive solutions constantly monitor and protect against breach, fraud, theft and sabotage.
The Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest and most diverse top-10 computer science departments in the United States. It has more than 900 undergraduate majors, 250 graduate students and 52 faculty members, and is credited with a strategic economic impact of $8.7 billion per year on the technology economy in Texas. Faculty and graduate students are working on pressing problems such as climate change, cancer and disease, genetics and DNA, safer and more fuel-efficient cars, robotics, cybersecurity and national defense.
For more information contact: Lee Clippard, 512-232-0675, lclippard@mail.utexas.edu; Keith Little, Raytheon, 703-608-4230, kdlittle@raytheon.com
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