A coalition of National Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance in close collaboration with sponsors have established INSuRE.  INSuRE is a persistent geographically distributed network increasing academic research diversity and quality using real cybersecurity research challenges.  The primary focus of the pilot has been on preparing better qualified students with practical training in mission-oriented research problems, thereby preparing students for careers in protection and defending our Nation’s critical infrastructure.  A second benefit is that these students provide usable and valuable research results to the sponsors.  The process is proven. INSuRE has served 272 students at 12 universities with over 50 problems sponsored by 20 technical directors at 9 different agencies. 

 Conceived in 2012 and launched in 2013, INSuRE began with the principle goal of leveraging all CAE-Rs whose purpose is to increase understanding of robust cybersecurity technology, policy, and practices that will enable our Nation to effectively prevent, detect, or respond to a catastrophic cyber event. Time is of the essence in the area of cybersecurity, leading to the need for less internal competition, and more cooperation so that together we better secure cyberspace for America and Americans. Specifically, INSuRE successfully piloted a research network that:

• introduces more and better qualified students into the workforce
• connects institution-level resources, University enterprise systems, and national research networks;
• enables more rapid discoveries and recommendations from researchers, experts, and resources;
• supports development of collaborative science teams addressing new or existing research challenges;
• provides development and sharing of tools that support research, and,
• facilitates evaluation of research, scholarly activity, and resources, especially over time.

The INSuRE students have assisted sponsor agencies:

• Understand new technologies:  As an example, an INSuRE task was focused on the "Fast IDentity Online" (FIDO) standard which is intended to improve the security and user experience associated with authenticating to web sites.
• Develop tools:  NSA is a developer and proponent of a scheme called Control Flow Integrity that is intended to offer a fundamental improvement in the basic security of computer platforms.  Testing to help validate the scheme was performed under INSuRE. Another example is the development of a tool to visualize open channels of attack using vulnerability data in the Commercial Solutions for Classified program.
• Validate guidance:  When a user inadvertently places sensitive data on a network that is not authorized to store that data, cleanup efforts ensue.  These efforts are complicated by the nature of certain cloud technologies, where information is purposely distributed and copied to improve performance and resiliency.  INSuRE teams worked to test and validate NSA guidance on cleaning up such spillages.

Last Modified: 10/14/2016
Modified by: Melissa J Dark