Cybersecurity Analysis to Support Secure Transportation Cyber-Physical Systems

This project is designed to strengthen transportation cybersecurity in an era where artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled and AI-enhanced cybercrime is increasingly capable of scaling deception, automation, and attack sophistication against cyber-physical systems. The project builds directly on the team’s prior legislative gap analysis and the development of TraCR AI, a retrieval-augmented large language model that helps transportation officials and policy makers identify applicable legal obligations and compare regulatory approaches across jurisdictions. The central technical contribution is the development and testing of a modular defensive wrapper for transportation-focused large language model (LLM) and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) tools, intended to detect and mitigate adversarial attacks that exploit legal reasoning systems and to support a testbed for LLM-targeted cybercrime scenarios. In parallel, the project includes legal and policy research that assesses gaps in US frameworks for addressing AI-enabled cybercrime and draws on international examples to inform best practices for governance, enforcement, and secure deployment. The overall objective is to produce deployable defenses and practitioner-facing guidance that improve trustworthiness in AI-assisted compliance and policy analysis for critical transportation infrastructure.

• Record URL:
  • https://www.clemson.edu/cecas/tracr/research/projects/#cybersecurityanalysistosupportsecuretransportationcyberphysicalsystems

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $333,382.00
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3552344812

  69A3552348317

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590

  University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

  Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering
  P.O. Box 870205
  Tuscaloosa, AL  United States  35487-0205
• Managing Organizations:

  National Center for Transportation Cybersecurity and Resiliency (TraCR)

  Clemson University
  Clemson, SC  United States 

  University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

  Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering
  P.O. Box 870205
  Tuscaloosa, AL  United States  35487-0205

  University of Texas at Dallas

  800 W Campbell Rd
  Richardson, Texas  United States  75080

  Clemson University

  216 Lowry Hall
  Clemson, SC, SC  United States  29634
• Project Managers:

  Chowdhury, Mashrur

• Performing Organizations:

  University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

  Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering
  P.O. Box 870205
  Tuscaloosa, AL  United States  35487-0205

  University of Texas at Dallas

  800 W Campbell Rd
  Richardson, Texas  United States  75080

  Clemson University

  216 Lowry Hall
  Clemson, SC, SC  United States  29634
• Principal Investigators:

  Hockstad, Trayce

  Jones, Steven

  Lu, Kun

  Khan, Latifur

  Thuraisingham, Bhavani

  Salek, Sabbir

  Morris, Eric A

• Start Date: 20260401
• Expected Completion Date: 20270331
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Artificial intelligence; Computer security; Data privacy; Machine learning; Policy, legislation and regulation
• Geographic Terms: United States
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Law; Planning and Forecasting; Policy; Security and Emergencies; Transportation (General);

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01988326
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: National Center for Transportation Cybersecurity and Resiliency (TraCR)
• Contract Numbers: 69A3552344812, 69A3552348317
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Apr 29 2026 4:33PM