One FBI estimate puts the cost of cybercrime in 2004 at about $400 billion. Even more significant, however, is that if on-line criminal activities continue to grow unchecked, confidence in the safety and reliability of the Internet will erode, leading to a reversal of the growth of e-commerce that we have seen in the last decade.

The task of battling cybercrime brings both immense challenges and great opportunities. The challenge is to develop innovative technologies and tools that can combat cybercrime. Clearly, herein also lies an opportunity to create superior technologies to combat cybercrime and rapidly commercialize these technologies.

The Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications (CATT) is a collaborative research center in New York City, consisting of researchers from the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments of Polytechnic University and Columbia University. CATT has been a key element of New York's telecommunications industry since its founding over 20 years ago. Over the past two decades the overarching mission of CATT has been to stimulate economic development in New York through research and education in telecommunications and information technology.

CATT has recently received funding from the office of New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research (NYSTAR) to embark on a mission to create an internationally recognized center that will serve as an engine for innovation and enterprise for the creation and commercialization of technologies for cybercrime prevention, detection and attribution. Polytechnic already has a very strong program in cybersecurity and is ideally positioned to leverage its resources in this area to develop a center of international stature.

As part of this effort CATT will:

1. Provide seed funding to academia-industry research and development partnership projects that aim to create new technologies and tools for the prevention, detection and attribution of cybercrimes.
2. Provide an infrastructure in partnership with Polytechnic's Brooklyn Enterprise for Science and Technology (BEST) incubator to facilitate quick commercialization and deployment of new technologies.
3. Provide a laboratory for small businesses in NY State to research, test and prototype new designs and products and showcase them to potential customers.
4. Establish a forum that brings together law enforcement, academia, small businesses and large corporations for information sharing on the problems, experiences, expertise, and research needs of each community.
5. Create a training program that helps create a workforce with a good understanding of tools and techniques for combating cybercrime.
6. Offer free services to New York City small businesses to help them combat cybercrime. These free services will include onsite network security assessment, white papers and educational material.

Among the specific projects being planned are:

1. Commercialization via BEST for Polytechnic's successful research in network forensics and cyber-attack early warning systems.
2. Commercialization via BEST for a system to detect and prevent network abuse.
3. Development of tools for the detection and neutralization of "botnets" of subverted PCs used by cybercriminals.
4. Analysis of attacks and development of tools for the security of Voice over IP (VoIP)
5. Development of high speed defense against denial of service attacks

Companies and individuals interested in working with CATT should contact Nasir Memon (memon@poly.edu) for more information.