Advancing Cybersecurity: A Framework of Cyber Research Priorities

The objective of this report is to drive significant operational improvements across a wide range of missions and systems through the identification and evaluation of seven enduring topic areas that have ongoing significance within cybersecurity’s rapidly evolving landscape. The seven areas the report identifies to meet this goal are as follows:

1. Analytic and Operational Tradecraft for Cybersecurity
2. Securing AI-Based Systems and Workflows
3. Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) Security
4. Cybersecurity for Complex Integrated Systems
5. Insider Threat and Human–Systems Interaction
6. Secure Engineering and Mission Confidence for Critical Software-Reliant Systems
7. Modeling and Simulation (M&S) in Support of Security

The report explores two aspects of each area: (1) its content and scope to identify specific problems and their significance, and (2) our analysis of vision and research opportunities to suggest possible future states in cybersecurity engineering and operations, along with the research vision and potential steps to achieve it. The analysis provided in this report shows how accelerating research in these areas can provide substantial benefit to the broad community of the Software Engineering Institute’s partners in the Department of War, the intelligence community, the Department of Homeland Security, other government agencies, and industry. This report targets an audience of research leaders, operational leaders, and mission leaders for the purpose of identifying relevant technical challenges and defining a vision-driven research agenda to meet the challenges of modern cyber threats in the context of the most sophisticated systems.