Re: InfoSec Grants

["Hagan, Sean" <sean.hagan () YC EDU>]

Hi Michael - I've got just under two weeks of experience with this, so hopefully someone else with a lot more knowledge 
will respond.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is one funding source - I believe you need to apply through 
your state DHS office.  Our state DHS cutoff for grant applications for FY20 was tomorrow, but it's been extended for 
another week (I assume it's different with each state, but maybe not?).  The grant request needs to have a nexus to 
terrorism (well, terrorism prevention).  I would venture to guess NSF would be another source, but I don't have any 
knowledge or experience with their grants.  In previous years, I'd looked into grants from the Department of Justice - 
one fell under the Office on Violence against Women (I had hoped to use it to pay for security cameras on campus).

I would think you'd be less likely to get grant monies for FTE and more likely to get money for specific projects or 
hardware/software.  I would also think your institution might be less likely to support grant requests for FTE since 
they would have to pick up the tab once the grant funding is over or abruptly terminate the employee.  No specific data 
to support those contentions though, and obviously entirely dependent on your institution and the granting organization.

I will say that working with our state DHS on the grant application has been quite pleasant - they provide lots of 
materials on their website, are pretty responsive to email inquiries, and offer seminars and presentations throughout 
the state.  They also publish data on number of requests, grants fully funded, partially funded, and not funded, and 
they break that information down by region and have data going back a few years, so you can perhaps get a sense for the 
likelihood of approval or not (assuming your state does something similar).

Anyway, that's about the extent of my knowledge.  I knew they were a grant source last year, found out a week ago that 
the deadline was tomorrow, and worked with my grants office to put together a proposal.  We'll submit it and then cross 
our fingers and wait for several months to see if it gets approved (it would be funded this October if approved).  And 
of course, I know of at least one other IHE in our state applying for the same pot of money, so there is definitely a 
competitive aspect to it.

Good luck and I'm hopeful some other Educause members share their experiences and/or knowledge of potential funding 
sources.

Regards,

Sean



From: The EDUCAUSE Security Community Group Listserv <SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU> On Behalf Of Menne, Michael S
Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2020 2:14 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: [SECURITY] InfoSec Grants

Does anyone know of any infosec grants that we could use to grow our internal (non-academic) security operations?  We 
do utilize students as interns, so an academic grant may help a bit, but I'm looking to grow our full time security ops.

Thanks

Michael Menne, CISSP
Chief Information Security Officer
IT Solutions Information Security
Minnesota State University, Mankato
Phone:  (507) 389-5705
mnsu.edu/cyberaware<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fmnsu.edu%2fcyberaware&c=E,1,levdzzWMd0IXEozzYxIdIh6kVbQCWRIc5mtIfO4BQPmTk9SI4ZZQqg37UrtZXKU84knHOINf_YAmB1Q8hjJyBPTOvpcZI4OFq31AL6Rxa5ZF8aKiJiAmy7U,&typo=1>

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