Last week the US National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a five year, $67 million investment establishing the Safeguarding the Entire Community of the U.S. Research Ecosystem (SECURE). This is a complicated investment involving the University of Washington (funded at $50 million) as the lead and a group of regional centers based at various universities, plus some additional partners offering analytic services. In some ways, the activity is modeled after the REN-ISAC program (see https://www.ren-isac.net) which has served the research and higher education community well as a clearinghouse for information technology security issues. For details on the NSF SECURE funding, see

https://new.nsf.gov/news/nsf-backed-secure-center-will-support-research

There's also some useful reporting by Science that fills in additional background and details. See

https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-invests-67-million-national-research-security-centers

There are many interesting issues that are worth tracking beyond fundamental questions about how the Ecosystem will function and how effective it will be. For example, how are the organizations at the participating universities positioned, both administratively (in terms of links with the Chief Research Officer, CIO, Library, and other units with interests in research security) but also academically -- it's clear that there's heavy faculty participation, but which academic units and disciplines are engaged in the work at the participating universities?

I hope that CNI will be able to help share information on some of these issues in the coming months.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI