Attaining meaningful cybersecurity presents a broad societal challenge. Its complexity and the range of systems and sectors in which it is needed mean that successful approaches are necessarily multifaceted. Moreover, cybersecurity is a dynamic process involving human attackers who continue to adapt. Despite considerable investments of resources and intellect, cybersecurity continues to pose serious challenges to national security, business performance, and public well-being. Modern developments in computation, storage, and connectivity to the Internet have brought into even sharper focus the need for a better understanding of the overall security of the systems we depend on.
The research cultures that have developed in the security community and in affiliated disciplines will increasingly need to incorporate lessons not just from a wider variety of disciplines, but also from practitioners, developers, and system administrators responsible for securing real-world operational systems. This report is aimed primarily at the cybersecurity research community, but takes a broad view that efforts to improve foundational cybersecurity research will need to include many disciplines working together to achieve common goals.
There have been many reports on cybersecurity research offering many recommendations. Rather than echo these reports and expand their lists of proposed projects, the committee has focused on foundational research strategies for organizing people, technologies, and governance. These strategies seek to ensure the sustained support needed to create an agile, effective research community, with collaborative links across disciplines and between research and practice.
