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Theme - The President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee 2003 R&D Exchange Workshop: R&D Issues to Ensure Trustworthiness in Telecommunications and Information Systems that Directly or Indirectly Impact National Security/Emergency Preparedness (NS/EP) Introduction Research and Development (R&D) Exchanges are special events conducted periodically by the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC). Tracing their origins to 1991, the broad purpose of an R&D Exchange is to stimulate a dialogue among industry, Government, and academia on emerging security technology research and development issues. To ensure inclusion of all stakeholders in the R&D community, the President’s NSTAC has traditionally partnered with the Office of Science and Technology Policy, other key Government agencies with R&D roles (e.g., the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration, the National Institute of Standards and Technology), and academic institutions in sponsoring R&D Exchanges.
The increasing reliance on the public switched network,
the Internet, and computer applications to support national and
homeland security, emergency preparedness, and public safety places
a premium on “trusted” systems and networks.
An increasingly important research topic in the telecommunications and computer security field is the concept of trustworthiness, which is defined as assurance that a system deserves to be trusted—that it will perform as expected despite environmental disruptions, human and operator error, hostile attacks, and design and implementation errors. Trustworthy systems reinforce the belief they will continue to produce expected behavior and will not be susceptible to subversion. Furthermore, trustworthiness of a networked information system ensures the system completes its required functions and does not do other things. Design and implementation errors must be avoided, identified, eliminated, and, where undetected, tolerated by the networked information system. The National Research Council’s seminal
report, Trust in Cyberspace, helped frame the issue of trustworthiness,
which included the correctness, security, reliability, safety, and
survivability of the public switched network and the Internet; the
software (or “logical”) elements of computer networks;
and the systems, devices, and applications employed by end users.
A third tension not explicitly called out in the report but closely associated with the concept of trustworthiness is broadening the focus to include cyber, physical, and personnel security issues. To date, the R&D community has emphasized the importance of developing trustworthy networked information systems in cyberspace. However, those systems are also exposed to a host of threats (exploitation by insiders, physical destruction) that extend beyond the realm of cyberspace.
The NSTAC, in conjunction with the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC) at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is sponsoring the 2003 R&D Exchange on March 13-14, 2003 in Atlanta, Georgia. The purpose is to explore the security R&D issues associated with ensuring trustworthy NS/EP telecommunications. Specifically, it will be a two-day event featuring several keynote speakers and breakout sessions focused on the full range of R&D issues (policy, science and technology, operational) affecting the ability of network owners and operators to engineer and architect trust into the networked information systems that comprise NS/EP telecommunications. Leaders from the Federal Government, private industry, academia, and State and local governments will be invited to:
The exchange will open with a plenary session including several keynote speakers designed to convey the importance of and current state of affairs in trustworthiness research. Following the plenary, the participants will divide into breakout groups to identify the major research challenges and to devise proposed research priorities. Each breakout group will include representatives from private industry, academia, and government (both Federal Government and State and local officials). The exchange will conclude with a plenary session that includes presentations from the groups.
The Research and Development Exchange is a special event conducted periodically by the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC). Historically, its broad purpose is to stimulate and facilitate a dialogue among industry, Government, and academia on emerging security technology R&D issues. To ensure inclusion of all stakeholders in the R&D community, the President's NSTAC has partnered with the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and academic institutions in past R&D Exchanges. The results of the R&D Exchanges are generally captured in a Proceedings document that is published by the President's NSTAC. In 1990, the growing prevalence of hacker incidents led to the formation of the NSTAC's Network Security Task Force. Its purpose was to assess the threats to and vulnerabilities of the Public Switched Telephone Network. A key component of the task force's work included examining R&D issues related to security with a particular emphasis on improving commercially applicable tools. To explore security technology R&D issues in greater depth, the R&D Exchange concept first surfaced in 1991. To date, there have been four R&D Exchange events:
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