Joining the Center for Information Protection
UC Davis is planning to join the Center for Information Protection, a National Science Foundation Industry/University Co-operative Research Center. In order to do so, we must assemble an Industrial Advisory Board. This web page gives a very quick overview of the benefits of joining our Industrial Advisory Board.
On June 17, we held a meeting discussing the plan. Slides and such from the meeting are available in this booklet. If you are looking for the slides for a specific talk only, please go to the Planned Agenda page and look at the talk you are interested in.
What the Center for Information Protection Is
The Center for Information Protection, founded at Iowa State University, has as its goal to study the problems of security and assurance, and to develop tools and technologies to help companies protect themselves from attackers intent on stealing information or using computers as launching pads for attacking others.
The mission of the Center for Information Protection is to research and validate the means and methods necessary to improve the overall assurance posture of this nation"s cyber infrastructure. To this end, the CIP will partner with providers and users of security solutions to protect data and information assets critical to their industry.
The goals of the center are:
- To assist industry with research and development through industry/faculty research collaborations;
- To improve training and education of employees in information protection;
- To build a repository for all CIP members that contains information protection research results, relevant literature, and other resources that can be shared within the membership;
- To review, improve, and model specific protection architectures tailored to security problems present in critical infrastructure industries;
- To provide a well-trained pool of students; and
- To perform basic and applied research relevant to the needs of the members of the advisory board and to industry in general.
Benefits of Membership on the Advisory Board
The Industrial Advisory Board is critical to the success of the CIP (and, indeed, any NSF I/UCRC). The IAB determines the research direction of the center by voting on whether, and at what level, to fund projects proposed by Center members. These proposed projects are developed by industry and university researchers together, and brought to the annual meeting of the IAB. The full Industry Advisory Board then votes on which projects to fund.
The members of the IAB have access to faculty and graduate students, and are in a good position to recruit graduate students in computer security to work for, or with, them after graduation. Their researchers and scientists also have the opportunity to work with faculty and students on the research projects, thereby enhancing the value of the research done and making it more useful to their company or organization. This also allows several companies to leverage the combination of the research funds committed to the CIP to apply them on a project, or projects, useful to all. Members also get early access to research results and publications, and in fact members working with university researchers may be co-authors on publications, if appropriate.
Industrial Advisory Board Membership
Of course, any company from industry can join by executing a contract with UC Davis. So can government organization, although the mechanism is a bit different: the funding is done through the NSF. We, or they, will be happy to discuss how to do this.
There are two levels of membership:
- Vendor members: Members in this category typically (but not always) will be companies that work in information protection and computer security, have their own development, or directly benefit from the research. The annual membership fee for this level is at least $30,000 per year.
- User members: Members in this category typically (but not always) are companies that are end users of information protection and computer security. The annual membership fee for this level is at least $15,000 per year.
Votes for the different levels of membership are counted the same: $1,000 equates to 1 vote.
For More Information
For more information, please contact:
Prof. Matt Bishop
Department of Computer Science
University of California at Davis
One Shields Ave.
Davis, CA 95616-8562
phone: (530) 752-8060
email: bishop@cs.ucdavis.edu
About the National Science Foundation's Industry/University Cooperative Research Program
The National Science Foundation' Industry/University Cooperative Research (I/UCRC) Program is designed to foster partnerships among industries and universities. The NSF web site on Industry and University Cooperative Research Program describes the program in more detail. This quote presents the idea behind the centers:
The National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers (I/UCRC) Program is influencing positive change in the performance capacity of the U.S. industrial enterprise. Over the past two decades, the I/UCRCs have led the way to a new era of partnership between universities and industry, featuring high-quality, industrially relevant fundamental research, strong industrial support of and collaboration in research and education, and direct transfer of universitydeveloped ideas, research results, and technology to U.S. industry to improve its competitive posture in world markets. Through innovative education of talented graduate and undergraduate students, the I/UCRCs are providing the next generation of scientists and engineers with a broad, industrially oriented perspective on engineering research and practice.
From the National Science Foundation's I/UCRC Model Partnerships web page.