DETROIT ? The University of Detroit-Mercy’s Center of Cyber Security and Intelligence Studies has completed the “brain” for its National Secure Software Assurance Repository, a $1.8 million Department of Defense project aimed at making tomorrow’s software more secure.

Just last week, Center Director Dan Shoemaker was in Washington DC to demo the project for officials at the DOD, National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security.

“The end game is an online place where those in Academia, Government, and Industry who acquire, develop, or sustain software intensive systems can go to learn, contribute, and collaborate so that the software that runs everything from cell phones to our national infrastructure is more secure,” said Assistant Professor Jeff Ingalsbe, who is the strategic lead on the database project.

Ingalsbe came to UD-Mercy last September from Ford Motor Company, but he had been working as a research fellow at the private college before taking his new job.

“I had worked with Dan to come up with the project,” Ingalsbe said. ?I want to make sure the technical details are right. I also help people program and show them how to analyze the research.”

So far the conceptional framework upon which the database is built – the picture of the brain – has been finalized, he said. Access to the database is still under negotiation.

Ingalsbe said two significant events have now occurred: An agreement has been reached on what the domain of secure software assurance looks like. As a result, some 500 bubbles have been created ? interrelated concepts ? to break the information down into more manageable pieces.

“It’s a way of collaboratively, graphically learning about software assurance online through this interface,” he said.

The National Secure Software Assurance Repository is housed at the Cyber Security Laboratory, which was designed and specified in collaboration with Ford Motor Company IT Security personnel. Ingalsbe said he received a lot of help from Nick Smither, Ford Group Vice President and CIO and Scott Roundy, Director and Chief Information Security Officer.

The mission of the laboratory within the larger Center of Cyber Security and Intelligence Studies is to be a focal point for cutting edge research, advanced education, and service to the community.

The $1.8 million that funded the Repository and the Lab came through federal earmarks generated by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, Shoemaker said. Some of these federal dollars also will be used to hire PhD’s to perform a lot more research.

An open house will be held at UD-Mercy at the end of March where Levin and other benefactors will be able to see what the federal dollars have purchased.

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