Empowering defenders through our Cybersecurity Grant Program

Since its inception, the program has supported a diverse array of projects. We are excited to highlight a few of them. 

Wagner Lab from UC Berkeley

Professor David Wagner’s security research lab at UC Berkeley is pioneering techniques aimed at defending against prompt-injection attacks in large language models (LLMs). The group is working with OpenAI to enhance the trustworthiness of these models and protect them against cybersecurity threats.

Coguard

Albert Heinle, co-founder and CTO at Coguard⁠(opens in a new window), uses AI to reduce software misconfiguration, a common cause of security incidents. Software configuration is complex, which is compounded when connecting software to networks and clusters. Current software solutions rely on outdated rules-based policies. AI can help automate the detection of misconfigurations and keep them updated.

Mithril Security

Mithril has developed a proof-of-concept to fortify inference infrastructure for LLMs, including open-source tools to deploy AI models on GPUs with secure enclaves based on Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs). This project aims to demonstrate that data can be sent to AI providers without any data exposure, even to administrators. Their work is available publicly on GitHub⁠(opens in a new window), and as a whitepaper detailing their architecture⁠(opens in a new window).

Gabriel Bernadett-Shapiro

An individual grantee, Gabriel Bernadett-Shapiro, created the AI OSINT workshop and AI Security Starter Kit, offering technical training on the basics of LLMs and free tools for students, journalists, investigators and information-security professionals. In particular, Gabriel has emphasized affiliated training for international atrocity crime investigators and intelligence studies students at Johns Hopkins University to help ensure they have the best tools to leverage AI in both critical and challenging environments.

Breuer Lab at Dartmouth

Security Lab Boston University (SeclaBU)