The University of Pittsburgh has again
earned designation from the National Security Agency
and the Department of Homeland Security as a National
Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance
Education (CAEIAE). This re-designation affirms the
contributions made by the School of Information Sciences’ security
curriculum to the field of Information Assurance Education.
A ceremony recognizing the CAEIAEs was held on June
5 as part of the annual conference of the Colloquium
for Information Systems Security Education. Ronald
L. Larsen (Dean) and James Joshi (lead faculty for
the SAIS track) were present at the designation ceremony
in Boston.
The Security Assured Information Systems (SAIS) tracks
of study, offered in the graduate programs in both
Information Science and Telecommunications, are key
to the designation as a Center. The SAIS tracks focus
on the design and development of secure networked information
systems; the deployment, management and maintenance
of networks, systems and IT infrastructures; and the
evaluation and certification of the security of systems
and software. The curriculum is certified by the Committee
on National Security Systems (CNSS) as meeting all
five of the national standards for Information Assurance
(IA) education. Currently, there are only 12 institutions
that have all five certifications.
The (CAEIAE) program seeks to promote university-level
instruction and research in securing networks and information
systems, or information assurance (IA). To earn the
prestigious CAEIAE designation, an institution undergoes
a stringent review of its contributions to IA education
and research covering such critical items as funded
research projects, IA focused curriculum, and the quantity
and quality of published research work. The designation
as a Center validates the efforts of Pitt and SIS to
provide a superior education in Information Assurance,
which is critical to preparing the workforce to defend
critical technological infrastructure here in the US. |