Safeguarding Science

An Outreach Initiative for Protecting Research and Innovation
in Emerging Technologies

An informed, empowered scientific community is best positioned to assess emerging technologies and their applications and to design measures to guard against the potential misuse or theft of these technologies. The National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) has partnered with multiple federal agencies to develop an outreach initiative, “Safeguarding Science,” designed to raise awareness of the spectrum of risk in emerging technologies and to help stakeholders in these fields to develop their own methods to protect research and innovation. The initiative focuses on emerging technology sectors where the stakes are potentially greatest for U.S. economic and national security, including the following:

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SAFEGUARDING SCIENCE GOALS

Promote a U.S. research ecosystem that emphasizes collaboration, openness, equity, integrity, and security, all of which facilitate innovation
Provide curated resources for our stakeholders to support best practices in protecting research and innovation
- Supplement existing ethics training with security education to provide case studies relating to misuse and exploitation of research
- Provide inclusive educational opportunities for domestic / international students and faculty that are germane to the fields of research and development
Assist academia and industry in developing their own methods to protect research from theft, misuse, abuse, or exploitation.
- Highlight shared responsibility of scientific community and U.S. government to protect research and innovation in emerging technologies
- Develop a culture of security awareness to supplement existing compliance measures, fostering scientific citizenship
- Evolve from a “do no harm” mentality to an explicit “not on my watch” mentality
Foster information exchanges to better identify emerging technology security challenges
- Establish liaison contacts between scientific community and the U.S. government
- Facilitate tripwire/suspicious activity reporting

SAFEGUARDING SCIENCE TOOLKIT

The resources categorized on the upper left side of the page have been developed with partners at the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Department of Defense (DOD), and other federal agencies.

The toolkit provides partners with a range of resources to choose from to help them better protect their research and innovation. The resources include training, best practices, videos, awareness materials, policy references, and other materials from across the U.S. government, as well as from academia (including training for research institutions made by research institutions). The toolkit will remain a dynamic resource that is maintained and updated. Select a category to start accessing resources. Links to any non-Governmental information are provided for reference and awareness, and not as directions or NCSC recommendations.

As mandated by Congress, a core NCSC mission is to conduct counterintelligence (CI) outreach to the U.S. private sector, academic and research communities, as well as other external stakeholders to arm them with information about foreign intelligence threats to their organizations and ways to mitigate risk.