2024 Summary
We wanted to take a moment to reflect on NSF #2409859 RRCoP’s 2024. It’s been a big year for accomplishments. It feels like the shift has happened this year; we are now a force that gets listened to. We were able to make bigger asks, bring in high-profile speakers, and our community is being invited to more tables. Research institutions involved in all facets of regulated research have made great strides by working together. Thank you all for contributing to this journey—it’s incredible to pause and see how far we’ve come, but also how the narrative has evolved as we’ve matured in facing these challenges.
Brief Stats
~330 institutions from every state and 8 countries
1100+ people in the HigherEdCUI Slack community
47 presentations that delivered 4978 hours of attendance in 2024, with 11600 hours of consumed presentation content since the beginning of the award in December 2021
In the News
The U.S. National Science Foundation has awarded Trusted CI, the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, a five-year, $6-million per-year award to run through September 2029. Trusted CI has expanded with the addition of RRCoP to support regulated research. [News Article]
We had an opinion piece published in ACM titled Compliance Requirements in Research [ACM Article]
Monthly Webinars
RRCoP has continued hosting monthly webinars featuring experts across regulated research topics. Each session provided valuable insights and practical guidance, if you missed any, here’s the 2024 list with links to their recording.
RRCoP All Hands and Planning – January
CMMC 2.0 Rulemaking with Jacob Horne – February
NC State Regulatory Research Responsibility Ownership – March
Navigating Clinical Research Operations and Compliance – July
RRCoP Then & Now – August
EDUCAUSE Policy Overview – September
CISA Resources – October
Expanding Your Communication Channels – November
Trusted CI & RRCoP: The Next Five Years – December
Additional Presentations
RRCoP members also had some fantastic presentations that helped share our valuable messaging. Here’s a few standout ones. The entire list of these resources can be found online.
Research Compliance State of the Union with Laura Raderman
Secure My Research: Revolutionizing Cybersecurity in Academia with Will Drake
CMMC and Security Compliance in Higher Education with Jay Gallman, Kolin Hodgson, Melissa Kimble, and Wendy Epley
CMMC and R1 Research Universities with Laura Raderman
Workshops
A Day with the CMMC Assessors as a full-day workshop delivered at EDUCAUSE Cybersecurity Privacy Professionals Conference in May. This workshop also produced a Workshop Report by a team of volunteers. [Summary Webpage]
Regulatory Compliance for Research: DFARS, CMMC, HIPAA, GDPR, NSPM-33 as a half-day workshop delivered at NSF Cybersecurity Summit in October
Why Strong Data Protection Programs Are Vital for Higher Education Research as a half-day workshop delivered at EDUCAUSE Annual in October
Advocacy
RRCoP connects the expertise of the regulated research community with organizations that can highlight for policymakers the impact of federal regulations on the higher education research enterprise. These were published in 2024 with significant community representation.
EDUCAUSE Incorporating CMMC Requirements Into DOD Contracting Regulations | December 6, 2024
EDUCAUSE / AACRAO / AAU / AGB / APLU / NAICU Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act (CIRCIA) Reporting Requirements | July 1, 2024
EDUCAUSE / ACE / AAU / APLU / COGR / Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Program | February 28, 2024
EDUCAUSE NIST SP 800-171, Revision 3 | February 19, 2024
EDUCAUSE FAR Cyber Incident Reporting | February 19, 2024
Additionally, RRCoP is trying to further the visibility of higher education-specific challenges and use cases. We have added some narrative around some of our use cases on this page.
As we move into 2025, we’re excited to announce a new initiative, Ask The Assessor, in partnership with Frazier & Deeter. This initiative aims to document specific implementation strategies and gather feedback from assessors. Over time, this will grow into a small library of vetted implementation strategies, benefiting the entire community.
Thank you again for the support and continued collaboration. There’s still much to come, and more eyes than ever before are on our work.
Carolyn Ellis, RRCoP Principal Investigator
Erik Deumens, RRCoP Co-Principal Investigator
email: info@regulatedresearch.org