GMU and JMU presidents, Alan G. Merten and Linwood H. Rose, confer before talking to The Washington Post, National Public Radio and other media about the collaborative $6.5 million Critical Infrastructure Protection Project.

Photo courtesy of GMU Publications Office.

JMU and George Mason University will collaborate on a $6.5 million project to address the legal, technical and policy issues involved in protecting the United States' vital computer systems against cyber-terrorism.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology grant is among the largest ever received by either university, and it will fund the Critical Infrastructure Protection Project, which will be housed at the GMU School of Law in Arlington. The cooperative effort combines resources from GMU's National Center for Technology and Law and JMU's technology and information security programs to sponsor research and to train business and government leaders in how to protect the nation's computer networks against widespread attacks or hackers who attack across several jurisdictions.

The project will also use the expertise of federal officials, business leaders and researchers to clarify security issues as they relate to the networks that support America's critical infrastructure, including banks, the military, emergency services, telecommunications systems and energy sources.

The federal grant was steered to JMU and GMU by a congressional subcommittee chaired by U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.). JMU and GMU are two of 36 universities in the nation recognized by the National Security Agency as Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education. JMU is also home to the Commonwealth Information Security Center and the first distance-learning-based M.S. degree in computer science with a concentration in information security.
"This unique and collaborative program allows JMU and GMU to serve the national interest at a most critical juncture in our nation's history," says JMU President Linwood Rose. "Leveraging the two programs will give us a strength in this area that doesn't exist elsewhere in this country."

The project will be led by John A. McCarthy, a member of President Bill Clinton's administration team that facilitated government and private-sector collaboration in preparing vital computer systems for Y2K conversion.

"We want to become a center that researchers and government leaders come to for centralized information on cybersecurity," McCarthy says. "Right now, that data is all over the map."

The idea to protect the nation's computer systems from terrorism had its roots in the presidential commission formed after the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City.

Photo by Evan Cantwell ('97), GMU Publications