NIST aims grants at systems security

Critical Infrastructure Protection Grants Program

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is offering a boost to businesses that can help address shortcomings in commercial solutions to secure the nation's critical information systems.

A NIST grants program will provide $5 million this year to firms that have ideas about securing information systems that support such infrastructures as telecommunications, transportation and government services. Securing those systems within government by 2003 was mandated under Presidential Decision Directive 63, signed by President Clinton in 1998.

The grants program is a scaled-down version of Clinton's vision of a $50 million public/private institute that would have funded research and development in areas not addressed by existing efforts.

Congress rejected the plan for the institute, saying the administration did not provide a clear implementation plan, but lawmakers did give NIST $5 million for fiscal 2001. NIST will seek another $5 million next year to expand the program, said Ed Roback, chief of the Computer Security Division at NIST.

About $4.5 million will be available for the grants, and awards likely will range from $100,000 to $1 million over two years. However, all proposals up to $1.5 million will be considered, according to an April 13 Federal Register notice. Proposals are due to NIST by June 15.

Some sample research topics include:

Design of "test beds" and other means for experimentally validating network security technologies. Information assurance for emerging information technologies. Increasing resistance to penetration. Next-generation intrusion and malicious-code detection.