UMD Partners with MITRE on Cybersecurity Research and Development Center

The University System of Maryland (USM), including the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) and University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), is partnering with The MITRE Corporation to operate the first federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) solely dedicated to enhancing cybersecurity and protecting national information systems. Last week, MITRE was selected to operate the center by The U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The new FFRDC will support the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE), which NIST, the state of Maryland, and Montgomery County, Md., established in 2012 to help businesses secure their data and digital infrastructure by bringing together information security experts from industry, government and academia. The partners will support NCCoE in their efforts to develop practice guides that aid industry in more readily adopting standards-based approaches to tackling cybersecurity challenges.

"Creating a federal-university-private partnership is a very productive way to support NIST and the NCCoE as they approach the complex issue of cybersecurity, and we are absolutely delighted to be participating," said University of Maryland President Wallace Loh. "Our faculty expertise and outstanding students will make important contributions and will get unique opportunities to learn."

UMD faculty will be making contributions based on their expertise and drawing from multi-disciplinary collaborations.

"With over 50 faculty engaged in cutting edge cybersecurity research across the University of Maryland, ranging from computer science and engineering to criminology, psychology, business and public policy," said University of Maryland Vice President and Chief Research Officer Patrick O'Shea, "we are thrilled to continue to reach for new discoveries with our system, industry and government partners."

Student participation—graduates, post-docs and undergraduates—is also an important part of growing the cybersecurity workforce and pipeline of talent available to combat ever-changing cyber threats.

The FFRDC will support the the NCCoE's state-of-the-art cybersecurity research lab in Rockville, Md. UMD's Dr. Joseph JaJa, who holds a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, and Dr. Anupam Joshi of UMBC will serve in leadership roles on behalf of the University System of Maryland.

"The NCCoE is the best of government working with world-class IT companies to make our country safer and our economy more secure," said U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which funds NIST. "The NCCoE is a hub for innovation and development. I congratulate the University System of Maryland for partnering with MITRE to collaborate in support of the FFRDC. This new center unites the knowledge of the government with the know-how of the private sector to develop cyber technology solutions needed to protect dot-com entities and make our cyber infrastructure more resilient."

Published October 14, 2014