Hackers are making increasingly bigger headlines, so experts are looking to harness all the brain power they can get to stop attacks. At UMBC, researchers are planning to tackle the question of how that brain could come from a computer.

The university is partnering with IBM Research to create a new lab for cybersecurity that focuses on harnessing cognitive computing to ferret out attacks. The Accelerated Cognitive Cybersecurity Lab is set to be housed in the university’s College of Engineering and Information Technology, and is slated to open in the fall.

Along with working on tools developed at UMBC, researchers from the university and IBM will look to train Watson for cybersecurity. While it may not be as fun as Jeopardy!, security is important enough that UMBC is one of eight universities looking to help out, along with MIT,NYU and Penn State.

While work at the lab will focus on developing the systems for cognitive cybersecurity, researchers already know the problem they want to address.

One big issue is time, said Anupam Joshi, director of UMBC’s Center for Cybersecurity, who will lead the lab. On average, it takes around 200 days for companies to discover an attack, and researchers want to reduce that. Cognitive computing could also help analyze patterns behind attacks, Joshi said.

It may sound like the machines are coming for our cybersecurity jobs. With the big and growing gap between jobs and people to fill them, though, there’s a need for something else to step in.

As with the push for STEM education that could be another gap filler, the cognitive computing effort will take a multiyear effort that involves a lot of different players. As such, the lab doesn’t only want to rely on UMBC and IBM. Joshi said he researchers are looking to work with startups, such as members of the bwtech@UMBC incubator, as well as students.

“This is supposed to be an open ecosystem,” Joshi said. “This is not just a UMBC idea.”