Note: A recent article in Science Node, a free online publication, developed in collaboration with organizations in the US and Europe, looks at how scientists and IT experts can work together to better understand cyber risks.
As recent events have shown, cyber attacks can come at any time from anywhere and have widespread consequences. While many attacks target personal and financial information, the increasing data-driven nature of research means that scientific research is also dangerously vulnerable in the cyber age.
But when scientists look to cybersecurity experts to shore up these vulnerabilities, they find linguistic barriers. Words like confidentiality, availability, integrity — these terms don’t mean the same to information security professionals as they do to scientists.
To bridge this linguistic divide, funding from National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE) has launched the Open Science Cyber Risk Profile (OSCRP).
Coordinated between the NSF’s Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, DOE’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), and the Center for Trustworthy Scientific Cyberinfrastructure (CTSC), the initiative is building a full risk profile for the open science community.
“Our motivation is to help ensure the trustworthy nature of scientific computing by better understanding the project risks posed to science from cyberattacks,” says OSCRP organizer and CTSC Director Von Welch.