The sensor research is looking at ways to place sensors in a network "so you don't slow it down, you don't generate too many false alarms, and you don't have to spend too much on sensors," added Eugene Spafford, a computer science professor at Purdue.

One of MIT's research projects is focusing on ways to recover from attacks by returning a computer to a recently clean state, Rivest said. MIT's research is attempting to pinpoint the changes made to a computer's files by malware, then restore them, without discarding legitimate changes made, he said.

"Many machines are compromised daily," he said. "Cleaning up after these inevitable compromises leads to days of wasted effort by either the end users or by systems administrators."

The MIT project seeks to automate system restoration by recording a computer's history and rolling back any changes caused by an attack, he said. MIT researchers have tested the automated system on Linux and found that it can "effectively recover from a number of real-world and synthetic attacks," Rivest said.

In some cases, Northrop Grumman will use the consortium's research in its customers' networks. The universities are also free to seek other ways to commercialize research that they've done in-house, Spafford said.