Collaborative Research: CISE MSI: RDP: SaTC: Exploring Cybersecurity and Privacy Enhancement Techniques for AIoT

The synergy of the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), also known as the Artificial Internet of Things (AIoT), has been catalyzing numerous smart systems by moving AI closer to data sources, enabling low-latency or even real-time intelligent on-site decision-making. The synergy, however, also brings forth unprecedented challenges in data security and privacy due to the vulnerabilities exhibited in both AI and IoT. By addressing these critical cybersecurity challenges, the project seeks to enhance national resilience against cyber threats and contribute to the advancement of secure AIoT systems essential for modern society. This project investigates data and model attacks and defenses on AIoT devices and studies secure computation offloading schemes on AIoT devices through several research tasks. Toward addressing these challenges and extending sustainable research capabilities in Cybersecurity and AIoT of York College, this three-year project will establish long-term cross-department and cross-institution collaboration platforms, including a new Cybersecurity and AI lab at York, a summer visiting student research program at Stevens Institute of Technology and a joint AIoT research testbed. This project centers around data security and privacy risks incurred by the integration of AI and IoT with the following research tasks: 1) building a joint research testbed for integrating AI and IoT; 2) investigating data poisoning attacks and defenses on AIoT devices; 3) enhancing model privacy and robustness for federated learning in AIoT; and 4) empowering AIoT through secure computation offloading. Through these tasks, this project will result in novel research discoveries in the area of AIoT, including understanding to latest AIoT attacks and countermeasures. Students at York, majority of whom are from minority groups, will be recruited to engage in the research. New courses and modules will be developed in this project. The project outcomes will be disseminated to the community through website, workshops, journals and international conferences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.