The field of medicine has discussed moving Research into Practice in many papers. I looked at commonalities in three papers before, this time I’m going to consider this paper:
Davies, Barbara L. “Sources and models for moving research evidence into clinical practice.” Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing 31.5 (2002): 558-562
The paper discussed two methods that have been considered for moving Research into Practice.
One is a called the Cochrane Collaboration. This is a database of evidence-based studies in medicine. From the website, “Our vision is a world of improved health where decisions about health and health care are informed by high-quality, relevant and up-to-date synthesized research evidence.”
With so much research out there, the Cochrane Collaboration endeavors to create a database of the best evidence based research for consumption by practitioners. This doesn’t actually accomplish the task of moving research into practice, what it does is lets practitioners know what research has been done well and is a good candidate for use by practitioners.
The second method is best practice guidelines. From the paper:
Clinical practice guidelines are usually constructed by an expert panel and incorporate the results of relevant systematic reviews about a topic, as well as other types of research and the consensus views of expert clinician and researcher panel members.
These guidelines should be evidence based with recommendations for policy and practice. Per the paper, these are one of the most effective tools for improving health care quality.
What can we as Cybersecurity researchers take from this? First of all, we need more evidence based results. Secondly, best practice guidelines should be created by a group of experts, preferably by a panel that includes both researchers and practitioners. And thirdly, we need a central repository for both.
DTRAP supports these goals. Submit your evidence based research or your best practice guidelines to https://dtrap.acm.org/