Use cases tackle sector-specific cybersecurity challenges, which are defined by a community of sector technical professionals and business leaders. Below are the sectors for which we have communities of interest and projects. If you’re interested in joining one of these communities, or if you would like to engage with the center to help develop a new sector, contact us today.

Consumer/Retail Sector

One of the center's key priorities is to work with consumer-facing businesses to prioritize projects that will help better protect corporate and customer information and assets. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, there are more than 3.6 million retail establishments in the U.S., supporting more than 42 million jobs, with sales totaling about $2.5 trillion in 2012. This sector forms the backbone of the U.S. economy, and with its breadth and depth, improving the cybersecurity posture of these businesses will have an immense impact. 

Energy Sector

As part of the country's critical infrastructure, energy organizations and utilities know they must address cybersecurity concerns, but many struggle with how to implement more secure technologies. The NCCoE Energy team develops example solutions to help energy organizations adopt advanced security technologies.

Financial Services Sector

It’s no surprise that the U.S. financial services sector is the target of cyber attacks on a daily basis. To help these businesses defend against threats to their digital infrastucture and assets, the NCCoE Financial Services team works with industry leaders to define projects and with technical professionals to build reference designs to address important cybersecurity challenges.

Health IT Sector

Patient health information is worth more on the black market than stolen credit card information, but securing a healthfcare organization requires an understanding of providers’ unique needs, such as accessibility to and usability of a technology or tool. The NCCoE Health IT team tackles cybersecurity challenges with these needs in mind.

Hospitality Sector

The U.S. hospitality industry contributes nearly $600 billion to the U.S. economy and generates nearly $170 billion in federal, state, and local taxes each year. Protecting this industry and its high volume of financial transactions and related personally identifiable information from guest data is critical for its continued success. 

Public Safety/First Responder

The NCCoE's Public Safety and First Responder (PSFR) program is working with the first responder community to implement standards-based solutions to make public safety systems resilient against attack and to ensure immediate access to critical assets during incident response.

Manufacturing

The manufacturing sector is quite broad, including automotive, textile, electronics, and pharmaceutical companies. These organizations typically use power-driven machines or materials-handling equipment that rely on a network infrastructure. As these machines become more connected via the internet, new opportunities for cyber-attacks arise.

Transportation Sector

The ability to move raw materials, goods, and resources is critical to the U.S. economy, and this sector's increasing digitization creates improved efficiencies, but also presents new cybersecurity risks.