The Business Computing Research Laboratory (BCRL) was devised as an umbrella for several grants and contracts obtained by Dr. Dennis Guster, Director of BCRL in 2001. In particular, a grant from Minnesota State and Sun Micro Systems brought about a quarter million dollars of workstations and enterprise level servers to the BCRL. This equipment was destined to support research and instructional activities in the areas of distributed computing and computer security. The production equipment is housed in CH34A and the development activities are housed next door in CH 34.

The Center for Information Assurance Studies (CIAS) provides a supportive learning environment in which students are challenged to develop in-depth knowledge in various domains of information assurance. The mission of CIAS is to facilitate cyber security research, education and practice.

The Center assists in the creation of an interdisciplinary environment for research and study of issues related to information security and addresses major security and privacy issues from technical, business, legal, and policy contexts. Dr. Mark Schmidt is the founder and director of CIAS.