Cyber Security Center Overview

The Lincoln Beaver Works Cyber Security Center is a research and teaching center dedicated to improving all aspects of cyber security through the development and evaluation of innovative technologies. Within the center, Lincoln Laboratory staff, MIT faculty, and students apply sound scientific and engineering principles and methodologies to tackle some of the toughest problems affecting national interests and prominence in the cyber arena. Current areas of investigation include cyber science and analysis, cyber systems and operations, cyber testing and evaluation, cyber situation awareness and decision support, resilient systems, cyber ranges R&D, system assessments, and system exploitation.  The Center is also heavily involved in educating the next generation of cyber security researchers and designers through the following educational activities, one at the high school level and another at the college level:

Cyber Patriot

The CyberPatriot National Youth Cyber Education Program is the premier national high school cyber defense competition that is designed to give hands-on exposure to the foundations of cyber security. CyberPatriot is not a hacking competition; its goal is to excite students about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and inspire them toward careers in cyber security. Please visit http://www.uscyberpatriot.org/home  for further information.

Capture The Flag

Capture the Flag is an educational competition for undergraduate and graduate students. It allows students to practice defensive skills as well as learn how to attack. These competitions have also proven to be useful in testing new security technologies and techniques. Other research efforts are visualizing the competition and understanding the teams. We have published our experiences in Proceedings of 4th Workshop on Cyber Security Experimentation and Test (August 2011):  Joe Werther, Michael Zhivich, Tim Leek, and Nickolai Zeldovich, “Experiences In Cyber Security Education: The MIT Lincoln Laboratory Capture-the-Flag Exercise.” Please contact us for further information.

Cyber Mission Area Focus Areas

  • Red Team Assessments
  • System Exploitation
  • National Cyber Range R&D
  • Cyber Testing and Evaluation
  • Cyber Situation Awareness and Decision Support
  • Resilient Systems
  • Cyber Science and Analysis
  • Cyber Systems and Operations