CACAIS Project

CACAIS (the Center for Assured Critical Application & Infrastructure Security) was initiated in 2010, and is led by Prof. David M. Nicol, with Bill Sanders as co-PI. The purpose of CACAIS is to advance the rapid translation of cyber security research to application in the nation’s critical defense and societal systems. The challenge of protecting the Defense Department’s critical cyber applications and infrastructures from cyber security threats is well-recognized. While research conducted at top universities has the potential to address these challenges, it usually fails to do so, since it is not developed, tested, and validated to the extent necessary to insure its commercialization and subsequent application to problems important to national defense. This failure is directly related to the fact that agencies typically fund universities to focus on knowledge creation, rather than technology development and validation. CACAIS is filling this crucial gap by creating a physical test-bed for evaluating emerging cyber security technologies, providing staff to develop and maintain the test-bed, and facilitating a three-way collaboration among CACAIS, technology creators, and technology adopters to test and validate these new technologies for use in defense applications and national critical infrastructures.

(Funded by ONR.)