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Cyberspace has transformed the daily lives of people. Society's overwhelming reliance on cyberspace, however, has exposed its fragility and vulnerabilities: corporations, agencies, national infrastructure and individuals continue to suffer cyber-attacks. Achieving a truly secure cyberspace requires addressing both challenging scientific and engineering problems involving many components of a system, and vulnerabilities that stem from human behaviors and choices. Examining the fundamentals of security and privacy as a multidisciplinary subject can lead to fundamentally new ways to design, build and operate cyber systems, protect existing infrastructure, and motivate and educate individuals about cybersecurity. The Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014, as amended by the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2018, authorizes the National Science Foundation, in coordination with the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Homeland Security, to offer a scholarship program to recruit and train the next generation of information technology professionals, industry control system security professionals and security managers to meet the needs of the cybersecurity mission for federal, state, local, and tribal governments.

The SaTC program welcomes proposals that address cybersecurity and privacy, and draw on expertise in one or more of these areas: computing, communication and information sciences; engineering; economics; education; mathematics; statistics; and social and behavioral sciences. Proposals that advance the field of cybersecurity and privacy within a single discipline or interdisciplinary efforts that span multiple disciplines are both encouraged.

NSF and RNP/CTIC request joint research proposals submitted separately to both NSF and RNP/CTIC using the proposal submission process specific to each agency. Research topics of special interest to NSF and RNP/CTIC are: (1) security and privacy in networks; (2) the Internet of Things and cyber-physical human systems; and (3) malware detection. These topics that are of considerable mutual interest recognize the emerging threat and new opportunity in an increasingly networked world of people and smart technologies as well as the urgent need to address the societal challenge of cybersecurity. NSF strongly encourages new collaborations pursuant to this DCL.

Advancements in data-driven scientific research depend on trustworthy and reliable cyberinfrastructure. Researchers rely on a variety of networked technologies and software tools to achieve their scientific goals. These may include local or remote instruments, wireless sensors, software programs, operating systems, database servers, high-performance computing, large-scale storage, and other critical infrastructure connected by high-speed networking. This complex, distributed, interconnected global cyberinfrastructure ecosystem presents unique cybersecurity challenges. NSF-funded scientific instruments, sensors and equipment are specialized, highly-visible assets that present attractive targets for both unintentional errors and malicious activity; untrustworthy software or a loss of integrity of the data collected by a scientific instrument may mean corrupt, skewed or incomplete results. Furthermore, often data-driven research, e.g., in the medical field or in the social sciences, requires access to private information, and exposure of such data may cause financial, reputational and/or other damage.

The Space/Time Analysis for Cybersecurity (STAC) program seeks to enable analysts to identify algorithmic resource usage vulnerabilities in software at levels of scale and speed great enough to support a methodical search for them in the software upon which the U.S. government, military, and economy depend. Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice. See the full DARPA-BAA-14-60 document attached.

The SI2 program focuses on supporting robust, reliable and sustainable software that will support and advance sustained scientific innovation and discovery. Thus, proposals are strongly encouraged to describe their approach to quality software development through a defined software engineering process that includes software testing, the appropriate use of analysis tools and capabilities such as those made available through the Software Assurance Marketplace (SWAMP, https://continuousassurance.org/), and collaborations with resources such as Software Carpentry (http://software-carpentry.org/) and the Center for Trustworthy Scientific Cyberinfrastructure (CTSC, http://trustedci.org/), in order to gain access to expertise where needed, such as in software design and engineering, as well as in cybersecurity.