NSF Funds Research to Enable Distributed, Fair and Privacy Preserving Collaboration

HOBOKEN, N.J. ―Dr. Susanne Wetzel, Associate Professor of Computer Science, has recently been awarded a $457K research grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to investigate privacy and security in the context of enabling collaboration.

“As a recognized National Security Administration Center of Academic Excellence in both Information Assurance Research and Education, Stevens Institute of Technology is at the forefront of research in advanced solutions for secure and private computing,” says Michael Bruno, Dean of the Schaefer School of Engineering and Science.

Dr. Wetzel’s successful proposal, “Distributed Privacy—Privacy-Preserving Policy Reconciliation,” supports core security research in the Department of Computer Science. Falling under the umbrella of computer security, privacy-preserving policy reconciliation is a field of study with many real-world applications of interest to companies and governments --- enabling computer-based collaboration without exposing private or sensitive information.

A problem with conventional policy reconciliation methods is that at least one of the parties that wish to collaborate is required to disclose its policy data, even though it may be preferable to keep such information private. In buisiness-to-buisiness collaborations, it is critical for the companies to preserve as much of the privacy of their policies in order to maintain a competitive advantage. In consumer-to-business collaborations, consumers, on the other hand, are often forced to disclose their own private policies and have little to no influence in the transactions that govern the services they use.

A policy, as Dr. Wetzel explains, “Is a collection of rules that express which actions are permitted and which are disallowed in a system.” In order to allow multiple parties to collaborate, their policies must first be reconciled. Operations of this sort are becoming commonplace, for example, in roaming agreements between wireless telephone service providers and are expected to play a large role in Future Internet Architectures. While trusted third parties could be used to referee reconciliations, this comes at the expense of having additional parties involved as well as the need for trust assumptions with regards to those parties. The central goal of the proposed research is to develop distributed protocols that provide security, privacy, and fairness without the need for a trusted third party.

This research is carried out in collaboration with Dr. Meyer’s research group at the UMIC Research Center at RWTH Aachen in Germany. Independently of the NSF funding, Dr. Meyer’s group has recently received funding for this project from the DFG in the amount of 250K Euro.

Impact at Stevens

The award of this substantial, three-year NSF grant will further enhance the status of computer security studies at Stevens Institute of Technology, The Innovation UniversityTM, as well as create new learning opportunities for cybersecurity students. In addition to the research element, this grant will also support student research, seminars, and other outreach opportunities in the field of cybersecurity.

Dr. Wetzel’s work in information security is also funded by NSF grants awarded in 2008 and 2009. These awards not only support Dr. Wetzel’s own research, but also specifically promote undergraduate education at Stevens.

“Dr. Wetzel’s latest NSF grant will further enhance the high-caliber research and instructional programs at Stevens,” says Dr. Daniel Duchamp, Computer Science Department Director.

Dr. Wetzel coordinates the Center for the Advancement of Secure Systems and Information Assurance, which provides research and scholarship opportunities in cybersecurity to students. The research and teaching through this center allows students at Stevens to obtain a comprehensive education in cybersecurity making them highly-sought after candidates for cybersecurity jobs in academia, industry and government alike.

To find out more about Dr. Wetzel’s research and learning opportunities at Stevens Institute of Technology, please visit the professor’s research page and the homepage for the Department of Computer Science.

About Stevens Institute of Technology

Founded in 1870 and celebrating 140 Years of Innovation, Stevens Institute of Technology, The Innovation University TM , lives at the intersection of industry, academics and research.  The University's students, faculty and partners leverage their collective real-world experience and culture of innovation, research and entrepreneurship to confront global challenges in engineering, science, systems and technology management.

Based in Hoboken, N.J. and with a location in Washington, D.C., Stevens offers baccalaureate, master’s, certificates and doctoral degrees in engineering, the sciences and management, in addition to baccalaureate degrees in business and liberal arts.  Stevens has been recognized by both the US Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security as a National Center of Excellence in the areas of systems engineering and port security research. The University has a total enrollment of more than 2,200 undergraduate and 3,700 graduate students with almost 450 faculty. Stevens’ graduate programs have attracted international participation from China, India, Southeast Asia, Europe and Latin America as well as strategic partnerships with industry leaders, governments and other universities around the world.  Additional information may be obtained at www.stevens.edu and www.stevens.edu/news.