Brooklyn's Progress
May 2002

The U. S. National Security Agency (NSA) has designated Polytechnic University as a Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education. Polytechnic is the first school in New York City to receive the designation. The Agency program is designed to reduce vulnerabilities in the national information infrastructure by promoting higher education in information security and by training more professionals in information assurance. “Polytechnic is proud to be designated by the NSA as a Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education,” said University President Dr. David C. Chang. “The center will help produce security solutions that will keep pace with evolving technologies that are critical to America’s national security interests.” Dr. Nasir Memon, associate professor of computer and information science and an expert in cyberspace security, will direct the center. Much of the research will take place in Polytechnic’s new state-of-the-art Information Systems and Internet Security Laboratory, where current areas of research include steganography, digital watermarking and computer and network security. The laboratory is on the forefront in the development of secure digital commerce. Polytechnic joins 36 universities across the country that have received the center of excellence designation, including the U. S. Military Academy at West Point and the Air Force Institute of Technology. Universities designated as centers are eligible to apply for scholarships and grants through the federal Information Assurance Scholarship Programs. The National Security Agency is the nation’s cryptologic organization. It coordinates, directs and performs highly specialized activities to protect U. S. information systems and produce foreign intelligence information. A high-technology organization, the NSA is on the frontiers of communications and data processing. Polytechnic University, founded in 1854, is the nation’s second oldest private science and engineering school and the metropolitan area’s preeminent resource in science and technology. It serves New York’s high-tech economy with undergraduate and graduate programs in Brooklyn, Westchester, Long Island and Manhattan.