Centers of academic excellence: a case study

The US National Security Agency\´s Centers of Academic Excellence (CAEs) in Information Assurance Education program is in its seventh year, and 59 educational institutions have received the coveted "CAE" designation. The program was originally designed to jump-start education of an information security workforce by providing incentives to academic institutions to form information assurance programs and to students by providing scholarships. It has since been augmented by scholarship programs from the US National Science Foundation and the US Department of Defense. Several hundred graduates from these scholarship programs are already in the federal workforce. Indeed, information security and assurance has quickly become an important topic in computer science departments worldwide, with increasing numbers of information security specialists earning associate, undergraduate, masters, and doctoral degrees in the subject