George Mason University is one of nine universities chosen to serve on the Academic Affiliates Council, formed to support the operation of the nation’s first federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) solely dedicated to enhancing cybersecurity and protecting national information systems.
Through a competitive process, the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) selected MITRE to operate the FFRDC. The FFRDC will support the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE), which was established in 2012 by NIST, the state of Maryland, and Montgomery County, Md., to help businesses secure their data and digital infrastructure by bringing together information security experts from industry, government and academia. (Read more in NIST’s press release.)
To execute the goals of the newly established FFRDC, MITRE is partnering with the University System of Maryland (USM) and collaborating with other universities, nonprofits and organizations that advocate and perform cybersecurity research to ensure a broad perspective and the best expertise available. George Mason is among other elite universities involved in the new council, including University of Alabama at Birmingham, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Delaware, University of Illinois, University of Texas at Dallas and University of Texas at San Antonio.
“It’s time to put academics, government and the private sector together to develop cybersecurity solutions that are commercially viable,” says Sushil Jajodia, a University Professor and director of Mason’s Center for Secure Information Systems, based in the Volgenau School of Engineering.
The high-level research and development center will tackle evolving and critical security issues, Jajodia says, such as privacy concerns related to smart phones.
Smart phones have become part of our daily lives, from organizing our calendars to paying for our coffee. Soon, smart phones could replace credit cards as a common way to pay for goods, he says. That’s where cybersecurity experts need to find new ways to protect basic information, Jajodia says. Mason is well positioned to help from research and development to evaluating new approaches, he adds.
Serving on the prestigious council is another example of Mason’s increased foray into the growing cybersecurity field. Federal spending for cybersecurity is projected to be $13.3 billion by 2015.
This fall Mason became the first college in the country to offer a cybersecurity engineering degree that focuses on cyber-resilience engineering design. The program is designed to produce graduates who can prevent new cybersecurity problems before they happen. Also, this year Mason students formed their own cyber industry organization, Cyber Security Systems (CSS).
The new FFRDC will help to further the NCCoE’s goal to accelerate the adoption of secure technologies through public-private collaborations that identify and address today’s most pressing cybersecurity challenges.