The Research Security funding provides further support for the indirect costs of research security. Eligible universities are those receiving more than $2M in eligible RSF direct research funding.
2024-2025
For the current year, the table below summarizes how Queen鈥檚 University proposes to allocate its Research Security funding through various projects and provides details of the performance objectives, with indicators, for each project.
Total Funding = $535,320
|
Project Name |
Output (Investment of grant funds) |
Performance objective |
Performance indicator | Target outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Legal Tools and Databases |
$191,898 Source tools to support the evaluation of research security aspects of relevant research projects/collaborations/partnerships. |
Tools will be used to provide additional background on research partners, and standardize contract management to ensure security. | Implementation of two databases for competitve intelligence and corporate due dilligence. Funding will also be used for the development of a security tool to be used by U15 universities in Canada. | Softwares will be used in all risk assessments completed by the University during the year. |
| Research Legal Personel |
$21,868 Establish team for supporting research/data security, privacy, and compliance. Including senior management oversight. |
The team will be responsible for providing legal assessments of research projects, including helping complete NSERC risk assessments. | This projects target outcome will be complete 20 NSERC risk assessments. | Completion of 20 NSERC Risk assessment forms |
| Information Systems Security Support |
$35,000 Investment in the modernization and renewal of secure zone infrastructure. |
Investing in this project will increase the level of support available for researchers and the security of their data. | Number of research Users | The goals for this program is to support 100 research users, and services will be provided from April 1, 2024 beyond the end of the eligibility period at March, 2025. |
| Secure Research Operating Environment |
$30,000 Investment in the support for systems, such as: high performance computing and broad-based digital resources. |
Service support for over one hundred principal investigators using systems across the different resources | Sustained high service level | It is targeted that these resources will be used by at least 100 users, and the resources will be available as of April 1, 2024 beyond the end of the eligibility period. |
| Office of Safeguarding Research Operations |
$273,830 Working with and on behalf of Queen's researchers to ""know your partner"" and to develop detailed, justified and comprehensive risk assessment questionnaires and associated mitigation plans to ensure required security measures are in place. |
Development of comprehensive and high quality plans to ensure risks are recognized, understood and mitigated. | Funding agency assessment and approval; successful funding decisions; reduced/eliminated risk. | Funding agency assessment and approval; successful funding decisions; reduced/eliminated risk. |
Research Security Template Outcomes Report 2023-2024
Total Funding = $535,320
|
Project Name |
Output (Investment of grant funds) |
Performance objective |
Performance indicator | Target outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Legal Tools and Databases 00103-2023-08 |
$66,750 Source tools to support the evaluation of research security aspects of relevant research projects/collaborations/partnerships. |
Tools will be used to provide additional background on research partners, and standardize contract management to ensure security. | Implementation of two databases for competitve intelligence and corporate due dilligence. | Softwares will be used in all risk assessments completed by the University during the year. |
|
Research Legal Personnel 00103-2023-09 |
$72,966 Establish team for supporting research/data security, privacy, and compliance. Including senior management oversight. |
The team will be responsible for providing legal assessments of research projects, including helping complete NSERC risk assessments. | This projects target outcome will be complete 20 NSERC risk assessments. | Completion of 20 NSERC Risk assessment forms |
|
Information Systems Security Support 00103-2023-10 |
$39,000 Investment in the modernization and renewal of secure zone infrastructure. |
Investing in this project will increase the level of support available for researchers and the security of their data. | Number of research users. | The goals for this program is to support 1,000 research users, and services will be provided from April 1, 2023 beyond the end of the eligibility period at March, 2024. |
|
Secure Research Operating Environment 00103-2023-11 |
$30,000 Investment in the support for systems, such as: high performance computing and broad-based digital resources. |
Service support for over one thousand principal investigators using systems across the different resources | Sustained high service level | It is targeted that these resources will be used by at least 1,000 users, and the resources will be available as of April 1, 2023 beyond the end of the eligibility period. |
|
Office of Safeguarding Research Operations 00103-2023-12 |
$119,494 Working with and on behalf of Queen's researchers to ""know your partner"" and to develop detailed, justified and comprehensive risk assessment questionnaires and associated mitigation plans to ensure required security measures are in place. |
Development of comprehensive and high quality plans to ensure risks are recognized, understood and mitigated. | Funding agency assessment and approval; successful funding decisions; reduced/eliminated risk. | Funding agency assessment and approval; successful funding decisions; reduced/eliminated risk. |
|
Procurement of Software and Hardware 00103-2023-13 |
$207,110 This project will focus on procuring software and hardware to assist in improving the research security environement at the University. |
This software and hardware will reduce the risk of breaches in data and help assess risks to research projects at the University. | It is targeted that the procurement will be completed by June 2023. | It is targeted that the procurement will be completed by June 2023. |
Research Security Template Outcomes Report 2022-2023
Total Funding = $543,535
|
Project Name & ID RSF#-Year-Project# |
Output (Investment of grant funds) |
Performance objective |
Performance indicator | Target outcome | Actual Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Legal Tools and Databases |
$97,407 Source tools to support the evaluation of research security aspects of relevant research projects/collaborations/partnerships. |
Procure subscriptions. | Source two databases - competitive intelligence and corporate due diligence. | Implement use of two database. | Two legal softwares were procured to help with corporate due dilligence and competitive intelligences. These softwares were procured in June 2023 and have been incorporated into the risk assessment process at the University. |
|
Research Legal Personnel |
$125,612 Establish team for supporting research/data security, privacy, and compliance. Including senior management oversight. |
Define team constituents. | FTEs allocated. | Completion of 20 NSERC Risk assessment forms. | During the period, completed 23 NSERC Risk Assessment forms in appliactions to Alliance Grants at the University |
|
Information Systems Security Support |
$111,705 Investment in the modernization and renewal of secure zone infrastructure. |
Enhancing reliability, digital asset management, and security. | Sustained high service level | Suport over 100 users | Funds were used on activities including working on network security (segmentation, isolation, monitoring, firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention), secure access (authentication, encryption in transit), user provisioning/deprovisioning, SIEM and SOAR systems and practices (log collection, parsing, detection rules), conducting regular vulnerability scans (and advising or conducting remediation plans), managing reverse proxies and web security (including SSL certificates) and systems' hardening as well as responding to any anomalies, misconfigurations or adverse events (potential or actual) in our systems or networks used to host research projects. |
|
Research Operating Cost |
$30,000 Investment in the support for systems, such as: high performance computing and broad-based digital resources." " |
Service support for over one thousand principal investigators using systems across the different resources | Sustained high service level | It is targeted that these resources will be used by at least 1,000 users, and the resources will be available as of April 1, 2023 beyond the end of the eligibility period. | operated a security network which the University uses to host highly available centralized management and orchestration systems. That facilitates overseeing our entire infrastructure using monitoring, log ingestion & correlation tools (SIEM) as well as security tools (SOAR practices, password management system). The system allowed us to improve resiliency of existing solutions, such as vulnerability scanners, SIEM platform, which also made it significantly easier to deploy any changes or improvements. The system, due to its increased capability over base offerings allows us to explore (install, compare and benchmark) different security solutions to test required functionalities before we commit to using them long term. |
|
Risk assessment consultations, review and finalization |
$142,948 Working with and on behalf of Queen's researchers to "know your partner" and to develop detailed, justified and comprehensive risk assessment questionnaires and associated mitigation plans to ensure required security measures are in place. |
Development of comprehensive and high quality plans to ensure risks are recognized, understood and mitigated. | Funding agency assessment and approval; successful funding decisions; reduced/eliminated risk. | Funding agency assessment and approval; successful funding decisions; reduced/eliminated risk. | The office for safeguarding research has worked to support research security at the University.As a result of the work from the Safeguarding research office, Queen's university received: $4.4 million in support from NSERC Alliance Grants, $3.6 million for 21 researchers and $6.48 million to 10 researchers for CIHR project grants. |
|
Procurement of Software and Hardware |
$35,863 This project will focus on procuring software and hardware to assist in improving the research security environement at the University. |
This software and hardware will reduce the risk of breaches in data and help assess risks to research projects at the University. | It is targeted that the procurement will be completed by June 2023. | A contract management software was procured and implemented during the period. This contract management system provides a centralized system to manage all aspects of the contract management process. By centralizing and providing an audit trail/restricting access, security around research contracts has been improved. |