The Center for Information and Computer Security (CICS) is an interdisciplinary center, bringing together individuals and organizations with an interest in the areas of information security, computer security, information assurance, and cybercrime. CICS has been recognized by the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security as a "Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education".

The mission of the Center for Information and Computer Security is to coordinate and promote educational, research, and service projects in information and computer security, with an emphasis on cross-disciplinary initiatives. In particular, the Center's primary activities will be to:

1. Coordinate educational offerings to ensure that students have available to them quality courses in information and computer security, from a variety of discipline-specific viewpoints;
2. Coordinate joint research projects which advance the knowledge and state of the art in information and computer security;
3. Provide service and expertise in information and computer security to the university and to the North Texas area.

Latest news: Jan 22, 2007: UNT to host the 2007 Southwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Contest

The University of North Texas will be hosting the 3rd Southwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Contest this year, to be held March 23-25. In this contest, student teams take over a running and configured (or perhaps mis-configured!) network, and must keep systems and services running in the presence of ongoing attacks. In addition, students are given tasks to solve throughout the contest, which involve typical IT tasks such as setting up new accounts, enabling remote access, and installing new software. For more information, see the contest web site.