Increased demands for "more trustworthy" systems and the fact that a single sensor cannot detect and combine all types of anomalies being reported have prompted most modern information systems to employ multiple, diverse sensors. In multi-sensor environments, the sensors can collaborate with or complement each other to provide increased reliability. Intelligent sensor fusion of runtime behavior data will be critical for obtaining a holistic notion of a complex system's runtime status. Therefore, the outputs of the sensors must be fused in an effective manner in order to provide an overall view of the status of a distributed system.

Our current research focuses on generalizing our earlier work in sensor data fusion using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) for intrusion detection in order to provide a general surveillance capability for dedicated high performance systems. These high-performance environments must deal with the same problems as traditional environments but with the constraint that the solutions must not mitigate the central focus of any HPC system (i.e., speed and high performance).

Computer crime and computer forensics are areas of study that are rapidly growing in importance and visibility. With the increased ease with which an unscrupulous person can access the internet and commit crimes with and against computers, and the increased emphasis on homeland defense in this country, there is a growing need for computer science and software engineering graduates with the skills to investigate these crimes. This course will introduce the topics of computer crime and computer forensics. Students will be required to learn different aspects of computer crime and ways in which to uncover, protect and exploit digital evidence. Students will be exposed to different types of tools, both software and hardware, and be able to use them to perform rudimentary investigations.

Present day networks face continuous threats from hackers. An understanding of the potential perils, and the strengths and limitations of existing solutions to this problem is relevant not only for students specializing in security, but for every person for whom a computer is an indispensable part of life.This course introduces private and public key encryption, key distribution (Kerberos, public key infrastructure), cryptographic hash functions, digital signatures, IP Security, Secure Socket Layer, WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy for wireless networks), intrusion detection, Firewalls, denial of service, spam, email viruses, phishing, and an overview of many attacks that the Internet has experienced, especially in the last decade.