About

Goals of the Science of Security Virtual Organization

The President’s plan for Federal cybersecurity research and development includes as one of only four thrusts the research to develop a “science of security” that would provide first principles and the fundamental building blocks for security and trustworthiness.  It further recognizes that the multi-dimensional nature of the problem will require contributions from biology, economics and other social and behavioral sciences in addition to the traditional disciplines of mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering.  Numerous activities have been initiated across government, academia, and industry to advance the development of such a science.  This Science of Security Virtual Organization is established through the collaboration of Federal Agencies to provide a focal point for security science related work and to facilitate the creation of a collaborative community to advance security science.

About Science

Security science is taken to mean a body of knowledge containing laws, axioms and provable theories relating to some aspect of system security. Security science should provide an understanding of the limits of what is possible in some security domain, by providing objective and qualitative or quantifiable descriptions of security properties and behaviors.  The notions embodied in security science should have broad applicability - transcending specific systems, attacks, and defensive mechanisms.   The individual elements contained within security science should contribute to a general framework that supports the principled design of  systems that are trustworthy, they do what people expect it to do – and not something else – despite environmental disruption, human user, and operator errors, and attacks by hostile parties. Trustworthy system design may include contributions from a diverse set of disciplines including computer science, systems science, behavioral science, economics, biology, physics, and others. The definition of security science itself is not considered settled - discussion is invited under this Forum Topic.