Trustworthy Computing

SYNOPSIS

The Trustworthy Computing program envisions a future in which our increasingly ubiquitous and distributed computing and communication systems deliver the quality of service they are designed to achieve, without disruption, while enabling and preserving privacy, security and trust. The program supports research and education activities that explore novel frameworks, theories, and approaches towards realizing a trustworthy computing future, recognizing that a number of intertwined scientific, technological and sociological challenges must be overcome to do so.

The program will support projects that strengthen the scientific foundations of trustworthiness, in order to inform the creation of new trustworthy technologies. We especially seek new models, logics, algorithms, and theories for analyzing and reasoning about all aspects of trustworthiness-- reliability, security, privacy, and usability-- about all components and their composition. Building on its predecessor program Cyber Trust, the Trustworthy Computing program will also continue to support projects that explore the fundamentals of cryptography, that examine and strengthen security weaknesses in current algorithms or protocols, and that explore new computing models that promise to improve trustworthiness or our reasoning about it.

A trustworthy system depends on its building blocks and their interoperability. These building blocks range from hardware processes, possibly with new features to support trustworthiness, to network protocols and system software, to applications software. While today many researchers focus on one of the many building blocks that comprise our systems, the Trustworthy Computing program encourages investigators to explore research opportunities directed towards integrating these building blocks through new security architectures, with emphasis on those that are generic but also including those that are application-specific.

As computing systems have begun to pervade every aspect of daily life, people need to be able to trust them—so much of their lives depend on them. The Trustworthy Computing program seeks proposals to provide scientific and technological perspectives on privacy and usability. Threats to citizens’ privacy arise in many sectors of daily life, e.g., health, financial, and e-commerce, and assuring privacy is essential to the foundations of democracy, e.g., voting and the freedom of speech. The program will support the exploration of new scientific methodologies and technologies to state, reason about, and resolve conflicts among privacy policies, and between privacy and security policies. Further, we need new models, methods, algorithms, and tools to safeguard the information of individuals wherever it may digitally reside.

The Trustworthy Computing program also seeks proposals focused on usability. Incorporating trustworthiness into a system should not place undue demands on human users or impact human or system performance. People are often the weakest link in security. How can we make it easy and enjoyable for people to use computing systems yet still protect them from unforeseeable attacks on their security and privacy? The needs of users are many, and include being informed of threats and breaches, to managing the appropriate dissemination of personal information on social networks, to controlling access to information that may be harmful to minors. System design for usability in different contexts demands new approaches to integrating and balancing among different functionalities, understanding human perception of trust including privacy, informing users of potential pitfalls, and predicting the potential consequences of user decisions.

Understanding the interplay between people and technology is also essential, for trustworthiness cannot be assured through technological innovation alone. Consequently, the Trustworthy Computing program will support multidisciplinary research proposals that consider both the social and technical dimensions of created a trustworthy computing future, recognizing that such research must be undertaken in a context that considers regulatory and legal implications.

If we are to make progress toward realizing a trustworthy computing future, we must characterize trustworthiness and the many different classes of threats. While current solutions largely focus on known security threats, the Trustworthy Computing program seeks proposals aimed at characterizing future threats too, where such threats may be driven by adversarial motives that are yet to be identified or understood. Methods must be developed to evaluate systems for trustworthiness, so that they can be confidently used. Evaluation may include a combination of methods that involve analytical reasoning, simulation, experimental deployment and, where possible, deployment on live systems. New technology is required, such as testbeds and methodologies that enable system experimentation at scale without exposing operational systems to threats, such as those that may be unintentionally introduced by trustworthiness enhancements. Metrics must be developed that can confidently predict system trustworthiness based on realistic assumptions of the capabilities of adversaries, and they must be measurable or amenable to reasoning. Requirements for trustworthiness must be defined, so that they inform the effective design of trustworthy computing and communications systems.

Information on projects supported by the Cyber Trust program is available at: http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13451&org=CNS&from=home.

Trustworthy Computing Point of Contact:

Karl Levitt, Point of Contact, Trustworthy Computing Program, 1175N, telephone: (703) 292-8950, fax: (703) 292-9010, email: klevitt@nsf.gov

Funding Opportunities for Trustworthy Computing:

CISE Cross-Cutting Programs: FY 2009 and FY 2010

THIS PROGRAM IS PART OF

CISE Cross-Cutting Programs: FY 2009 and FY 2010