The Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a federally funded research and development center headquartered on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.

The SEI also has offices in Washington, DC and Los Angeles, California.

The SEI operates with major funding from the U.S. Department of Defense.

The SEI also works closely with industry and academia through research collaborations.

Computer security, also known as cybersecurity or IT security, is the protection of computer systems from the theft or damage to the hardware, software or the information on them, as well as from disruption or misdirection of the services they provide.

A computer network or data network is a telecommunications network which allows nodes to share resources.

In computer networks, networked computing devices exchange data with each other using a data link.

The connections between nodes are established using either cable media or wireless media.

The best-known computer network is the Internet.

A system is a set of interacting or interdependent component parts forming a complex or intricate whole.

Every system is delineated by its spatial and temporal boundaries, surrounded and influenced by its environment, described by its structure and purpose and expressed in its functioning.

The CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) is the coordination center of the computer emergency response team (CERT) for the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), a non-profit United States federally funded research and development center.

The CERT/CC researches software bugs that impact software and internet security, publishes research and information on its findings, and works with business and government to improve security of software and the internet as a whole.