The Internet is now a prime vehicle for business, community, and personal interactions. The notion of identity is the important component of this vehicle. However, user’s identities are scattered across isolated Internet sites and various security and privacy issues of identity have been increased. In this research area we have investigated security and privacy issues of identity mangement. This research has been supported by the following grants: Gail-J. Ahn, User-centric Identity and Privacy Management, $114,000, Bank of America, 2005 - 2007 Gail-J. Ahn, Privacy Attribute Specification and Management, $105,839, Bank of America, 2004 - 2005 Gail-J. Ahn, Privacy Attribute Management, $101,881, Bank of America, 2003 - 2004 Gail-J. Ahn, Access and Identity Management, $89,000, Bank of America, 2002 - 2003 Gail-J. Ahn and Zhaoyu Liu, Email Fraud Protection for Financial Services, $16,300, Bank of America, 2002 Gail-J. Ahn, Scalable Token-based Authentication: Architecture and Mechanisms, $35,000, National Science Foundation, 2001-2003 Gail-J. Ahn, Authentication Architecture for Healthcare Information, $36,998, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2000-2001

In today’s generation of information technology, it is critical to manage large-scale networks and distributed systems efficiently and securely. We are motivated to provide novel access control solutions that fulfill the needs of heterogeneous applications and environments. Our research and development focus on leading edge issues of access control, including generic access control models, methodologies, mechanisms, security policies, and innovative access control applications. This research has been supported by the following grants: Gail-J. Ahn, Secure Information Sharing in Internet-based Collaborative Applications, $155,077, National Science Foundation, 2003 – 2008 Gail-J. Ahn, Secure Information Sharing within a Collaboratory Environment, $265,000, Department of Energy CAREER Award, 2003 – 2008 Gail-J. Ahn, Engineering a Role-based Infrastructure management System, $75,000, ETRI, 2002 – 2003 Gail-J. Ahn, Role-based Access Control on PMI, $51,000, ETRI, 2001 – 2002 Gail-J. Ahn, Compositional Modeling and Analysis of Role-Based Access Control in Distributed Systems, Faculty Research Grant, $6,000, UNC Charlotte, 2002 - 2003 Gail-J. Ahn, Access Control on Wireless Application Environment: Models, Architectures and Tools, Faculty Research Grant, $6,000, UNC Charlotte, 2001 - 2002

This research area is geared towards discovering ways to significantly enhance the security of computer networks and the reliability of systems assurance. We articulate the past and current technologies used, discovering their weaknesses and limitations, and aggressively proposing more promising technologies that provide systematic solutions to distributed network and systems. This research has been supported by the following grants: Gail-J. Ahn, Detecting and Responding Network-centric Attack through Visual Analysis, $102,507, National Security Agency, 2007 - 2009. Tom Holt, Gail-J. Ahn and Bill Chu, Examining The Creation, Distribution and Function of Malware On-Line, $280,073, Dept of Justice/NIJ, 2007 - 2009. Teresa Dahlberg, Gail-J. Ahn, Essam El-Kwae, and Asis Nasipuri, Experimental Testbed for Mobile Network Protocols, $100,000, National Science Foundation, 2001 – 2005 Bill Chu, Gail-J. Ahn, Yongge Wang and Brent Kang, Analyzing and Defeating Network-centric Attacks Using Honeypots, $87,000, e-Business Technology Institute, 2005 – 2007 Yuliang Zheng ang Gail-J. Ahn, Security in Pervasive Computing, $57,000, Hewlett-Packard Research, 2002 – 2003 Seok-Won Lee, Gail-J. Ahn and Bill Chu, Critical Infrastructure Protection Center Initiatives: DITSCAP Automation, $294,500, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, 2004 - 2006

- Secure infrastructure & Networking Groups (SING)

- Knowledge-intensive Software Engineering (NiSE) Research Group