Two universities have received a combined $1,272,320 from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) to improve cybersecurity control investment decisions.
The University of California, San Diego was awarded $1,045,015 earmarked development of threat intelligence tools and techniques for measuring the reliability and value of a threat intelligence source to an enterprise.
The project will include four kinds of metrics, officials said, technical, comparative, operational and risk, as a means of allowing end-users to compare different threat intelligence products reliably.
The University of Illinois, Chicago received $227,305 for a year-long effort to develop a cyberattack economic impact model, and a tool to automate data collection and analysis, to provide near real-time estimates of cyberattack outcomes.
Officials said the work would provide a standard baseline against which organizations can evaluate and quantify estimated economic impacts of cyberattacks for cybersecurity investment decision support.
“These additions to the Cyber Risk Economics (CYRIE) portfolio address capability gaps to help make cyber control investment decisions that decrease our exposure to risk,” Erin Kenneally, CYRIE program manager, said. “The threat intelligence metrics research will help organizations evaluate investments in threat intelligence products and services. The standard model for the cost of cybersecurity attacks research will provide organizations a baseline to evaluate potential cyberattacks impacts in order to make sound investment decisions; something that is difficult today because of the absence of an open source, data-driven model for understanding and characterizing harms.”