The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) recently awarded a total of $5,643,466 across seven organizations to develop new tools for cybersecurity researchers.
“Cybersecurity research and development, and the ability to develop new solutions will be enhanced significantly by having access to expanded, improved and new types of data resources,” William N. Bryan, the DHS Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Under Secretary for S&T, said. “S&T continues to uniquely champion this R&D resource via the IMPACT project.”
The Information Marketplace for Policy and Analysis of Cyber-Risk & Trust (IMPACT) project seeks to improve data and information-sharing capabilities through developing tools, models, and methodologies. It aims to enable empirical information-sharing between and among the global academic, industry and government cybersecurity research and development (R&D) community.
“The value of having a research infrastructure that delivers real-world, largescale and longitudinal data collection, provisioning and analysis to the R&D community is severely underestimated,” Erin Kenneally, S&T’s IMPACT program manager, said. “Too often such an infrastructure is assumed to exist without deliberate budgeted resources. “IMPACT lowers the barrier to entry for cybersecurity R&D by addressing the operational, legal and administrative costs that otherwise impede scalable and sustainable data-sharing.”
The awards were made through S&T’s Broad Agency Announcement.