(Host) Researchers at Norwich University will get more than $7 million from the federal government for computer security projects.

Senator Patrick Leahy helped secure the funding. He says the work will help businesses and governments defend against the kind of cyber attacks that struck government agencies over the Fourth of July holiday.

VPR's John Dillon reports:

(Dillon) Norwich University is the nation's oldest private military academy. And President Richard Schneider said when the school was founded in the early 1800's, it specialized in training infantry soldiers.

(Schenider) Because the threat in 1819 was the redcoats coming over these green hills. That was the threat and that's what we were training to do. Now we get attacked as a country, as a bank, or our federal government, the rest of our infrastructure every day in cyber warfare.

(Dillon) Norwich began specializing in computer security issues about 10 years ago. The school got a boost in 2002 when Congress named it a national center for counterterrorism and cyber crime.

Now Senator Patrick Leahy has secured $7. 7 million in federal funding for more cyber defense work.

Leahy said the widespread "denial of service" attacks on government and computer systems in early July highlights the importance of the work done at Norwich.

(Leahy) You will work on things here that will help us defend against attacks from thousands of miles away, attacks by individuals, attacks unfortunately sometimes by governments.

(Dillon) The federal money will go to two projects at Norwich. The first is a $1. 7 million grant to train police and fire departments in computer security skills. Another $6 million will go to a Norwich-led research consortium to create programs and software for cyber-security exercises.

Phil Susmann is president of the Norwich University Applied Research Institutes, which will direct the work. He said the July 4^th attacks - which were aimed against South Korean and U-S government agencies - were probably not the work of a lone hacker.

(Susmann) There's no attribution at this time. There's no information about who did this attack at this moment in time. The size of the attacks that were done on the Fourth of July suggest that it was a sophisticated entity and not a 16 year old in his basement.

(Dillon) Susmann said the on-line exercises being developed at Norwich- called WebDECIDE - should help financial institutions deflect future attacks.

(Susmann) We believe the "WebDECIDE" work and the cyber exercise work allows people to prepare and plan for these types of activities. In addition to that in the past five years we've run half a dozen working groups around the United States on different topics related to cyber conflict

(Dillon) Other participants in the research consortium include Miami University of Ohio, the Potomac Institute of Policy Studies, the University of Nevado and Utah State University.

For VPR News, I'm John Dillon in Northfield.