Readout: ONCD Participates in Formal Methods Conference at the University of Cambridge
November 7, 2024
Collaboration with global partners is critical to America’s cybersecurity. The Biden-Harris Administration remains steadfast in its commitment to fostering and strengthening international partnerships in cybersecurity.
On October 21-22, representatives from the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) attended the Isaac Newton Institute’s Conference on Formal Specification and Validation at Scale in Cambridge, United Kingdom (UK). The event highlighted ONCD’s report titled “Back to the Building Blocks: A Path Toward Secure and Measurable Software.” The report focuses on eliminating entire classes of vulnerabilities by using memory safe programming languages, secure chip architecture, and formal methods.
ONCD and the UK National Cyber Security Centre discussed their strong alignment toward implementing the concepts in the Back to the Building Blocks report, particularly the shared emphasis on research and development in mathematical reasoning and AI. The role AI will play in accelerating the adoption of formal methods in national security settings was a core theme of the conference, as was the role formal methods will play in ensuring safe and trustworthy AI. President Biden’s National Security Memorandum (NSM) on Artificial Intelligence calls for additional research in formal methods.
Anjana Rajan, Assistant National Cyber Director from ONCD, delivered remarks at the conference. She reinforced, “with formal methods, we can generate a mathematical proof that offers that level of assurance, giving technology developers another powerful capability in their arsenal that provides greater certainty that entire classes of vulnerabilities are absent.”
The conference further underscored the importance of partnership in support of building a secure and resilient cyberspace. The Biden-Harris Administration will continue to work closely with its international partners on bolstering cybersecurity, which is a key priority for the United States.
