What is the Maryland Cybersecurity Center (MC2)?
Updated
The Maryland Cybersecurity Center (MC2) is a cybersecurity research center at the University of Maryland, based at cyber.umd.edu. It focuses on security and privacy research and also publishes news and events alongside its research information. If you want to understand what the center does, who funds it, or what research areas it covers, the site's homepage gives a quick overview.
Core mission and research focus
MC2's work centers on security and privacy. According to the site, its current Ph.D. candidates focus on areas including:
- Malware analysis
- Post-quantum cryptography
- Human-centered security
Recent news items on the site point to related themes, such as detecting covert wireless signals, privacy trade-offs in targeted advertising, practical privacy for machine learning, and hidden security risks in AI systems.
Scale of research activity
The homepage lists several figures that indicate the center's size and output:
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| Active research grants | $16.5M |
| Doctoral students | 35 |
| Academic publications in 2021 | 61 |
The 2021 publication count breaks down as 45 conference papers, eight journal articles, seven workshop papers, and one book chapter.
Funding and partners
MC2 states that it receives research funding and other support from agencies and organizations including the National Science Foundation, Maryland Procurement Office, Department of Energy, Department of Interior, NIST, DARPA, Facebook, and Microsoft.
News and events
Beyond research information, the site shares news and a calendar of events. Recent news headlines cover topics like wireless threat detection, targeted advertising privacy, machine learning privacy, AI security risks, and cloud security patching.
When this page is useful
The MC2 homepage is a good starting point if you want a high-level view of the center's research areas, funding sources, and activity level, or if you are looking for its latest news and events. For deeper technical details, the individual research publications and news articles would be the next step.