Trusted CI at 2022 NSF Research Infrastructure Workshop in Boulder

Earlier this month, members of Trusted CI presented a workshop at the NSF 2022 Research Infrastructure Workshop in Boulder, Colorado. 

The Research Infrastructure Workshop was a four-day event on safety, cyberinfrastructure, cybersecurity, and science communication. The hybrid event included a poster session, social gatherings, site tours of NCAR’s Research Aviation Facility, GAGE, and NEON, and virtual ice breaker and speed dating sessions to facilitate networking opportunities for everyone. Several members of Trusted CI attended the multi-day event, making new connections with operational and senior leadership at major facilities, midscale facilities, and the NSF.

Our workshop on Friday targeted cyber security officers and focused on the JASON advisory report on Cybersecurity at NSF Major Facilities, cybersecurity guidelines in the Research Infrastructure Guide (RIG), a panel on building a cybersecurity program using the Trusted CI Framework, ransomware, and how the ResearchSOC supports NSF major facilities.

Representatives from the NSF, NRAO, OOI, GAGE, and the ResearchSOC presented and participated during the workshop. We thank Craig Risien (OOI), Wade Craig (NRAO), and Doug Ertz (GAGE) for participating in the Framework panel.

Trusted CI’s partner, CI Compass, led a cyberinfrastructure workshop earlier in the day that included panels on data management and workforce development.

We are grateful to the event organizers for giving us the opportunity to present, as well as meeting with our community members, both online and in-person.

Slides and videos from the event will be posted to the NSF Research Infrastructure Knowledge Sharing Gateway when they become available.

Trusted CI Webinar June 22nd at 11am ET: "How worried should I be?": The worst question we keep asking about research cybersecurity

Indiana University's Susan Sons is presenting the talk, "How worried should I be?": The worst question we keep asking about research cybersecurity, on June 22nd at 11am (Eastern). 

Please register here. Be sure to check spam/junk folder for registration confirmation email.

Susan Sons, Deputy Director of the Research Security Operations Center (ResearchSOC) will provide a mini threat briefing (a brief brief) and a broader discussion on how the research cybersecurity community approaches threat intelligence when we're at our best, and when we're at our worst.  Please join us and bring your questions!

Speaker Bio:
Susan serves as Deputy Director of ResearchSOC and Chief Security Analyst of IU's Center of Applied Cybersecurity Research.  She has a slight obsession with improving software engineering practices and the security of ICS/SCADA assets.  Known vulnerabilities: Can be bribed with dark chocolate.

Join Trusted CI's announcements mailing list for information about upcoming events. To submit topics or requests to present, see our call for presentations. Archived presentations are available on our site under "Past Events."

Von Welch & Susan Sons to present at ESnet's CI Brownbag talk on Friday June 14 @2pm ET

Von Welch and Susan Sons will be presenting, "NSF Resources for Research Cybersecurity: Trusted CI and ResearchSOC," on Friday June 14th at 2pm ET. This presentation is part of ESnet's series of CI Brownbag talks.

Cybersecurity for research has a number of particular challenges including unusual instruments, high-performance infrastructure, and global collaboratioins. This talk will cover two NSF-funded community resources for cybersecurity for research: Trusted CI, the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, and ResearchSOC, a security operations center designed for research infrastructure. The presenters, Von Welch, Director of Trusted CI, and Susan Sons, Deputy Director of the ResearchSOC, will give an overview of cybersecurity challenges for research and then cover the offerings of Trusted CI and the ResearchSOC.

The meeting will be held in Zoom:
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The talk will be recorded and posted to ESnet's GDrive archive when it is available.

Trusted CI Participates in ResearchSOC’s EDUCAUSE SPC Workshop

This blog post is cross-posted from the ResearchSOC blog. The ResearchSOC is a peer project of Trusted CI’s focused on providing operational cybersecurity services to the NSF community. It recently hosted a workshop at the 2019 EDUCAUSE Security Professionals Conference to which Trusted CI contributed.

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“Securing and Supporting Research Projects: Facilitation Design Patterns” workshop

Posted on May 24, 2019 by toddston

In case you missed the above workshop at EDUCAUSE SPC (and you may well have missed it—the workshop filled up early, had a long wait list, and was almost standing room only), the slides from “Securing and Supporting Research Projects: Facilitation Design Patterns” are now available.

Presented by Michael Corn (CISO, UCSD) and Cyd Burrows-Schilling (Research Facilitator, UCSD), the workshop helped prepare security professionals to support sponsored research projects. It provided an overview of how research operates within Universities; taught facilitation skills for working with faculty; and provided guidance on how to develop a project specific security plan that meets the requirements of NSD, DoD, and other sponsoring organizations.

We were honored to have Professor Tanya Berger-Wolf from the University of Illinois at Chicago join us in person. The session with Professor Berger-Wolf was a highlight of the workshop, and helped attendees understand how cybersecurity professionals can work with researchers and learn to navigate the gap between the traditional top-down approach to security and the practicalities of everyday research lab infrastructures.

And she is doing some really cool research.

Claire Mizumoto, Director of Research IT Services at UCSD joined us remotely and gave a thought-provoking presentation on the hurdles researchers face in obtaining funding, preparing grants, and meeting the aggressive time demands of obtaining tenure.

Florence D. Hudson, who is Founder and CEO at FDHint, LLC and Special Adviser to our friends at Trusted CI, the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, gave an overview of three extremely useful tools: the NSF Cybersecurity Planning Guide, the Software Engineering Guide, and the Information Security Practice Principles. If you’re charged with providing cybersecurity for research projects of any size, these are pretty much required reading.

Vlad Grigorescu, Security Engineer at ESnet, led a deep dive into ScienceDMZ, which is an excellent network design pattern for data-intensive research projects.
We’re grateful to all our guests for their participation and incredibly useful information. If you need more information on any of the topics presented, contact us at rsoc@iu.edu.

The workshop was organized by the ResearchSOC project (researchsoc.iu.edu – NSF award 1840034).

• Slide deck available here
• Cyber Ambassadors case scripts available here
• Intake Interview preparation example available here

Couldn’t make the workshop or hungry for more? No problem. Mark your calendar now for December 4-6, when we’ll present a full three-day workshop on the above topic. This hands-on workshop will be held on the University of California, San Diego campus. Details to follow.

The Research Security Operations Center (ResearchSOC) is a collaborative security response center that addresses the unique cybersecurity concerns of the research community. ResearchSOC helps make scientific computing resilient to cyberattacks and capable of supporting trustworthy, productive research. For more information on the ResearchSOC, visit our website or email rsoc@iu.edu.

CCoE Webinar January 28th at 11am ET: Securing Scientific Cyberinfrastructure: The ResearchSOC

Von Welch and colleagues are presenting the talk "Securing Scientific Cyberinfrastructure: The Research Security Operations Center (ResearchSOC)" on Monday January 28th at 11am (Eastern). The ResearchSOC is a new project that was announced last fall.

Please register here. Be sure to check spam/junk folder for registration confirmation email.

The research and education (R&E) community faces particular challenges regarding cybersecurity: diversity of size and autonomy, the use of diverse infrastructure (scientific instruments, sensor networks, sequencers, etc.), the highly collaborative and dynamic nature of scientific communities, and the specialized expertise needed to support cybersecurity in the research context. This webinar provides an overview of the ResearchSOC, which provides the R&E community with cybersecurity services, training, and information sharing needed to make scientific cyberinfrastructure resilient to cyberattacks and capable of supporting trustworthy, productive research.  

The ResearchSOC leverages existing cybersecurity services from Indiana University, Duke University, and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. It combines these operational services with the establishment of a community of practice for sharing best practices, lessons learned, and operational intelligence. The ResearchSOC couples these services with outreach and training, targeted at research projects and the higher education information security community, to educate them on information security for research.  

This webinar is ideal for technology managers supporting scientific research projects.

Speakers:

• Von Welch: Director, Indiana University Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research and Director, Research Security Operations Center.
• Richard Biever: Chief Information Security Officer, Duke University.
• Michael Corn: Chief Information Security Officer at the University of California, San Diego.
• Inna Kouper: Assistant Director, Data to Insight Center at Indiana University.
• James Marsteller: Chief Information Security Officer of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. Susan Sons: Chief Security Analyst at Indiana University Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research.

Presentations are recorded and include time for questions with the audience.

Join Trusted CI's announcements mailing list for information about upcoming events. To submit topics or requests to present, see our call for presentations. Archived presentations are available on our site under "Past Events."

Trusted CI Extended through 2019, Trusted CI Expansion, ResearchSOC, and Hiring!

Dear Trusted CI community,

I’m writing to share a number of pieces of Trusted CI news, starting with the great news that Trusted CI, through the funding of a supplemental proposal from NSF, has been extended through 2019. This funding is also going to expand Trusted CI’s team and activities in a number of important ways:

• Dr. Dana Brunson of Oklahoma State is joining Trusted CI to lead a new Fellows Program. This will broaden Trusted CI’s impact to underrepresented groups, NSF Ten Big Ideas, and across NSF directorates.

• Florence Hudson has joined Trusted CI to lead efforts to foster transitioning cybersecurity research to practice. She has already been in touch with a number of you in identifying cybersecurity gaps in our community that research could fill. If you have ideas in this area, please share them to info@trustedci.org.

• Dr. Sean Peisert of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will be joining Trusted CI to advance the Open Science Cyber Risk Profile and integrate it with the new Trusted CI Framework.


I shared some additional details on this expansion as well as Trusted CIs accomplishments on a recent NSF OAC webinar.

I’m also excited to announce the funding of the ResearchSOC. Funded as a collaborative security response center under NSF CICI 18-547, ResearchSOC will be led by myself, and my Trusted CI co-PI Jim Marsteller, along with colleagues from Duke, Indiana University, and the University of California San Diego. ResearchSOC and Trusted CI will be closely coordinated in delivering cybersecurity leadership and operational services respectively. For more details on the ResearchSOC, please see my recent presentation at the CICI PI meeting.

I also want to congratulate Trusted CI co-PI Craig Jackson on his new project, PACT, supported by $2m of funding from the Department of Defense to undertake assessments for the DoD community. On a bittersweet note, this means he will be reducing his time on Trusted CI and stepping down as a co-PI. Craig has been instrumental in that role in Trusted CI’s success and I thank him for his contributions and leadership. This project will be piloting assessments soon with an open call, so check out that unique opportunity for an in-depth cybersecurity assessment.

Finally, if Trusted CI or ResearchSOC sounds like something you would enjoy being a part of it, we have multiple positions open at Indiana University to be part of the CACR team and contribute to Trusted CI and our other activities. Please consider applying and sharing with those who may be interested.

Thanks to all the community for their support that makes Trusted CI possible. We look forward to continuing to serve you in meeting the cybersecurity needs of your trusted science.

Von Welch
Director and PI, Trusted CI, the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence
Director, Indiana University Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research