As revealed by Auburn University, the university’s McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security was awarded a $10 million Department of Energy grant in partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to create a pilot regional cybersecurity research and operations center to protect the electric power grid against cyber attacks.
The total value of the project is $12.5 million, with the additional $2.5 million coming from Auburn University and other strategic partners.
The center, officially named the Southeast Region Cybersecurity Collaboration Center (SERC3), will bring together experts from the private sector, academia, and government to share information and generate innovative real-world solutions to protect the nation’s power grid and other key sectors. It will include a mock utility command center to train participants in real-time cyber defense.
The center will run experiments with industry partners in a research lab environment to support integration of new and existing security software and hardware into operational environments. Research labs will be established at Auburn University, housed at the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, and at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, TN.
For more information, read the full release on Auburn University's website.
