The White House could release before the end of August the impact analysis of a key federal cybersecurity research and development (R&D) strategy since it was released in late 2011, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official who helped create the plan.
Known as Trustworthy Cyberspace: Strategic Plan for the Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Program, the White House national science and technology council plan defines a set of interrelated priorities for government agencies that conduct or sponsor cybersecurity R&D. The plan is organized into four “thrusts:” Inducing change, accelerating transition to practice, developing scientific foundations and maximizing research impact. Through these thrusts, the plan provides a framework for prioritizing cybersecurity R&D in a way that concentrates research efforts on limiting current cyberspace deficiencies, precluding future problems and expediting the infusion of research accomplishments into the marketplace. 
The principal objectives of the thrusts include achieving greater cyberspace resiliency, improving attack prevention, developing new defenses and enhancing government capabilities to design software that is resistant to attacks.
DHS Director of the Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate’s Cybersecurity Division Douglas Maughan said yesterday there has been a “tremendous” amount of activity since the plan was released. Maughan said there have been three or four workshops or discussions in about last 18 months, both inter-agency sponsored and private sector-sponsored, to hash out some cybersecurity problems and what needed to further be accomplished.
“I think it’s generated a lot there,” Maughan said yesterday as part of a panel in downtown Washington co-produced by NextGov and the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA).
Maughan said the plan’s “inducing change” thrust was key as it identified several new areas to think about: Cyber economics, moving target defense and tailored trustworthy spaces. Maughan said there were federal budget increases in some of those areas with DHS benefiting as well. Though an unspecified, but “significant,” amount of money was allocated to DHS in 2011 before being taken away in 2012, Maughan said DHS, within its S&T arm, funded about $15 million to $20 million worth of R&D in the new thought areas.
Maughan said DHS S&T received funds to help another of the plan’s key thrusts: “Accelerating transition to practice.” Maughan said DHS S&T has identified eight technologies to further transition and commercialize and that his division will be hosting three meetings later this summer; one in New York on Aug. 15, one in Washington in September and one in Silicon Valley in either August or September to help get these technologies out into the commercial marketplace.
“The goal is to take the government funded research that’s coming out of the national labs (and) put it in front of people who actually have money and are willing to invest in either licensing or commercializing,” Maughan said. “The labs do great research, but they’re not well known for transitioning and commercializing technologies,” he said earlier.
Maughan didn’t specify the cyber technologies he was referring to and an inquiry to DHS public affairs was not returned by press time.
The “national programs” thrust, Maughan said, featured a “tremendous” amount of activity in a number of key programs. Whether it was dealing with national initiatives on cybersecurity and education or a national strategy on trusted identities and cyberspace, Maughan said progress was being made.
“(This) part of the strategy called out the fact that we need to take technologies coming out of the research pipeline and put them into those programs,” Maughan said. “That is also happening.”