The global hacker community continues to grow and evolve, constantly finding new targets and methods of attack. University of Arizona-led teams will be more proactive in the battle against cyberthreats thanks to nearly $1.5 million in grants from the National Science Foundation. The first grant, for nearly $1 million, will support research contributing to an NSF program designed to protect high-tech scientific instruments from cyberattacks. Hsinchun Chen, Regents Professor of management information systems at the Eller College of Management, says the NSF's Cybersecurity Innovation for Cyberinfrastructure program is all about protecting intellectual property, which hackers can hold for ransom or sell on the darknet. "You have infrastructure for people to collect data from instruments like telescopes," Chen said. "Scientists use that to collaborate in an open environment. Any environment that is open has security flaws." A major hurdle to protecting scie...
