Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Introduction to the Trusted CI Cybersecurity Technology Transition to Practice (TTP) program

Enabling advanced cybersecurity research to bring value to our world

Throughout 2020, we will be posting Transition to Practice success stories. But first, what is Trusted CI’s Cybersecurity Transition to Practice (TTP) program and what are its goals?

The goal of Trusted CI’s Cybersecurity Transition to Practice (TTP) program is to enable collaboration among researchers and practitioners to accelerate the adoption of cybersecurity research into real-world practice in scientific research, academia, industry, government, or open source. The problem historically has been that there are great cybersecurity solutions that real-world practitioners may never hear about. By bringing people together, TTP seeks to help with the technology transfer that translates research into solutions.

The TTP program first seeks to identify key cybersecurity gaps and challenges, then explores NSF-funded research to address the gaps and challenges. Then through matchmaking, workshops, business model coaching, and shared learning, the program enables research, industry, academia, and government collaborations to fill the gaps. TTP builds a dynamic, collaborative, cybersecurity community of practice with researchers and practitioners working together to identify and address cybersecurity needs now and into the future, advancing the state of cybersecurity.

Florence Hudson, founder and CEO at FDHint and special advisor leading Trusted CI’s TTP program, explains: “Many researchers don't want to be president of a company, and they don't often have the opportunity or experience to find or work with practitioners who could help their research come to life. We coach the researchers in identifying their target clients, communicating a clear and compelling value proposition, and networking with potential users of their research to enable deployment in operational environments. In 2020 we added a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) assessment to the TTP program to enable the researcher to progress their research to help make it operations-ready. This can help the researcher and practitioners in real deployment of the research.”

The first Trusted CI Cybersecurity TTP Workshop took place in Chicago in June 2019. It’s a good example of the TTP program in action. Slides from the workshop are available >>