CTOVision

Melissa Hathaway Op-Ed on Cyber Security

Below I'm going to post, in its entirety, the text of an e-mail I received from the ODNI notification service.   The subject is an op-ed written by Melissa Hathaway, a senior leader who has been spearheading significant coordination action in the federal government (opinion: Melissa is perhaps the most effective SES-level leader in the US government today, IMHO).

I wanted to post this in totality for a couple reasons.  One is it is something all of us should read.  Although I believe most readers of this blog will find no surprises in this op-ed, Melissa has a real talent for capturing information in easy to understand ways and I think we can all borrow lessons from the way she explains things. 

CMU: An impressive resource

I recently finished a visit to one of our nation's greatest intellectual resources, the school of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University.   The incredible work being accomplished at the university includes the globally famous Software Engineering Institute and the equally renowned CERT/CC.  CMU also serves the nation by hosting and supporting Cylab.   More on each of these is below.

SEI is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC).  SEI processes and practices, which are almost certainly familiar to readers of this blog, are now being taught at universities everywhere.  Their comprehensive approach to quality is being used today by development organizations around the world and is producing fantastic results.  There are many reasons for this, but the short version is that SEI processes like the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), the Team Software Process (TSP) and the Software Engineering Measurement and Analysis (SEMA) have proven to enhance the quality and performance of software activities while reducing cost and development time.  Read more at: http://www.sei.cmu.edu.

The CERT/CC is a group I first stared working with in December 1998 when I was one of the startup grew of the JTF-CND.  I've been a big fan of them sever since, and have tried to track what was going on there, but frankly I lost touch and am really glad I got the in person update.  The CERT/CC is a critical enabler of hte IT industry's ability to detect and remediate vulnerabilities, conduct computer forensics, visualize cyber information, and respond to incidents of every scale.  For more on the CERT read more at: http://cert.org. 

The Cylab is the nation's largest university based research and education program focused on cyber security, dependability and privacy.  Cylab conducts sponsored research as one of the NSF CyberTrust centers.  According to the CyLab website:

The CyLab Strategy is to integrate response, prediction, research and development, and education both nationally and internationally and build capacity in:

• Technology – by pursuing an aggressive, highly interdisciplinary research and development agenda that integrates technology, policy, and management
• Human Resources – by educating professionals in Information Technologies, Business, and Policy, and by creating “cyber-aware” citizens worldwide
• Industry – by transitioning technologies to large, medium, and small companies and by creating start-ups

For more on the Cylab read more at: http://www.cylab.cmu.edu/.

Thanks to all at CMU for doing what you do, it is really appreciated by computer scientists, CTOs and leaders everywhere.  Please keep it up.