Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology (TRUST)
Principal Investigator and Center Director: Shankar Sastry
Lead Institution: University of California, Berkeley
This overview is also available as PDF:
TRUST Summary
A Powerpoint summary is also available:
TRUST Powerpoint Summary
See also
The TRUST 2006-2007 Annual Report
and the
1st 5 year Strategic Plan
(available only to
TRUST website members)
See also the TRUST section of "Profiles in Team Science."
Computer trustworthiness continues to increase in importance as a
pressing scientific, economic, and social problem. The last decade
has seen a rapid increase in computer security attacks at all levels,
as more individuals connect to common networks and as motivations and
means to conduct sophisticated attacks increase. A parallel and
accelerating trend of the last decade has been the rapidly growing
integration role of computing and communication in critical
infrastructure systems, such as financial, energy distribution,
telecommunication and transportation, which now have complex
interdependencies rooted in information technologies. These
overlapping and interacting trends force us to recognize that
trustworthiness of our computer systems is not an IT issue alone; it
has a direct and immediate impact on our nation's critical
infrastructure. As a consequence, there is an acute need for
developing a much deeper understanding of the scientific foundations
of cyber security and critical infrastructure systems, as well as
their implications for economic and public policy.
In response to this need, the
Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology (TRUST)
will be devoted to the development of a new
science and technology that will radically transform the ability of
organizations (software vendors, operators, local and federal
agencies) to design, build, and operate trustworthy information
systems for our critical infrastructure. The Center will bring
together a team with a proven track record in relevant areas of
computer security, systems modeling and analysis, software technology,
economics, and social sciences. The research team will be advised and
supported by an External Advisory Committee with strong representation
of vendors of information technology, critical infrastructure
protection providers, and other relevant stakeholders.
Through the active coordination and integration of efforts,
TRUST researchers will consider security in a hierarchy of
approaches that ranges from secure embedded systems to complex
interdependent systems, each approach informing and building upon the
others. Equally important, TRUST will address economic,
social, and privacy considerations as the technology is acquired and
absorbed into cyber-security products and the critical
infrastructure. The integrated, multidisciplinary approach made
possible by the Center mode of funding will allow solutions to
synergistically emerge from a "holistic systems"
view of computer security, software technology, analysis of complex
interacting systems, and economic and public policy.
The unifying approach and major technical goal of TRUST is
composition and computer security for component technologies.
Leveraging the prior investments of NSF, DoD and others in various
application testbeds, TRUST will continuously test the technologies
resulting from its research. The role of the testbeds will be to
integrate and evaluate technologies in specific and realistic systems,
keep the research on track to answer societal objectives, and
demonstrate the technologies for stakeholders in real systems.
To achieve and demonstrate the core objectives in the selected
real-life testbeds, TRUST will pursue a strongly coordinated research
agenda in the following areas:
TRUST will have an education and outreach component that focuses
on integrating research and inquiry-based education and on
transferring new and existing knowledge to undergraduate colleges,
educational institutions serving under-represented populations, and
the K-12 community. In so doing, TRUST will help lay the groundwork
for training the scientists and engineers who will develop the next
generation of trustworthy systems, as well as to help prepare the
individuals who will ultimately become the users, consumers and
beneficiaries of such systems.
TRUST will also take a comprehensive approach to knowledge
transfer. Since TRUST addresses well defined and long term societal
needs, the results in computer security, privacy and critical
infrastructure protection will be easily communicated to decision
makers, policy makers, and government agencies. With respect to
industry, the selected integrative testbeds will be the focal points
to interact with major stakeholder industries: power,
telecommunication and embedded systems. Since TRUST will comprise
multiple institutions, including technology vendors, infrastructure
providers and leading research universities, the result will be wide
spread dissemination, adaptation and continued evolution of ubiquitous
secure technology.
The legacy of TRUST to the nation will be the creation of a
science and technology base, policy base, educational base, and
technology transfer methodology for cybersecurity. The long-term
research agenda of TRUST will not only advance the frontiers of
knowledge in trustworthy computing; it will influence on a national
scale future academic research, industrial R&D and education as TRUST
researchers identify new directions of inquiry, disseminate their
findings to the broader community, and produce skilled graduates who
will advance the field further yet.
Intellectual Merit: TRUST will address fundamental
problems of science and technology for cyber security and critical
infrastructure protection. This goal requires a multi-disciplinary
approach, which can span layers of policy, technology and societal
concerns. To date, research efforts in information security have
tended to focus on individual components. TRUST will provide a
unique opportunity for a wide range of cybersecurity issues to be
addressed from many points of view (technological, scientific, and
social science). Areas of new science creation include new
cryptographic protocols and supporting systems, high confidence
software science, security functionality, policy and management, and
complex interconnected networked systems. Furthermore, TRUST
will have strong, well proven ties with IT vendors and infrastructure
providers, which will serve to both ground its research in real-world
problems and ensure avenues for knowledge transfer. TRUST will
have a significant impact at a national scale, as its research results
will lead to new concepts and doctrine for application to: public
policy issues around privacy, access control, and security; technology
for protecting and preventing information security breaches; and
increased protection of the nation's critical infrastructures, most
notably in the areas of telecommunication, electric power, and
transportation.
Broader Impacts: TRUST research will provide the science and
technology on which to establish a fundamental foundation for
addressing infrastructure security problems well into the next decade.
Solutions to today's problems are an essential requirement to
fulfilling the vision of ubiquitous computing. TRUST investigations
and subsequent results will be directed so as to lend maximum benefit
to social questions such as those in the area of policy, security and
privacy and economics and incentives. Increasing the number of
students who will join the nation's technical enterprise as
researchers is vital to American prosperity in the new millennium.
Accordingly, TRUST brings a strong focus on educational outreach
activities through its members' many activities. Educational
activities will be integrated with TRUST research, through K-12
programs, graduate programs, summer programs and directed research
projects with educational institutions that primarily serve
underrepresented populations
Academic Partner Institutions:
Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, Mills College, San
Jose State University, Smith College, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and
Vanderbilt University
Industrial Partners:
BellSouth, British Telecom, Cisco Systems, ESCHER Research Institute (Boeing, General Motors, Raytheon), Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel,
Microsoft, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pirelli, Qualcomm, Sun, Symantec, Tata Consultancy Services, Telecom Italia, United Technologies
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