When controlled research leaves your network, does protection go with it?

The AUECO Conference is the annual gathering of the Association of University Export Control Officers, a professional community of 600+ compliance specialists from more than 272 U.S. institutions of higher education. Each year a host university partners with the AUECO Executive Board to convene export control officers, research security staff, sponsored-programs administrators, and invited vendors for two days of sessions on the impact of U.S. export controls (EAR, ITAR, sanctions) on academic research, plus a pre-conference workshop day. The agenda blends regulatory fundamentals, real-world case studies on classifying and handling controlled technologies and data, licensing and exemption strategy, and the broader research security landscape (foreign influence, insider risk, sponsored-research oversight). The 2026 conference is hosted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, October 5–7, with workshops on October 5 and the main program October 6–7.

Virtru will be present at AUECO on October 6-7. 

This year the event is hosted by the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. The event is from October 5-, 2026 (Pre-conference workshops on October 5, and main conference from October 6-7)

Yes! We are proud to announce we will be Bronze level sponsor, exhibiting at this year's event! Meet the team on exhibit hall floor! 

Virtru enables: 

• Persistent, data-centric protection: Encryption and access policy travel with the file, so controls apply whether data sits in your VDR, a researcher's inbox, or a sponsor's cloud
• Attribute-based access control (ABAC): Enforce U.S.-persons-only, project-scoped, or citizenship-conditional access at the data layer
• Full audit and revocation: See who accessed what, from where, and pull access back at any time — even after the data has left your environment
• Native integrations: Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Gmail, Salesforce, Zendesk, and more — deployed without changing how researchers work
• Open standards, no lock-in: Built on TDF, the same open data format adopted by U.S. defense and intelligence agencies for protecting controlled information
• Higher-ed proven: Trusted by research universities across the U.S. to protect CUI, ITAR, EAR, and sponsored-research data

Protecting Controlled Research Data, From the Lab Bench to the Sponsor

Export-controlled research doesn't stay in one system. It moves — between PIs and postdocs, sponsors and subcontractors, foreign nationals and cleared collaborators, university networks and personal devices. Traditional perimeter tools weren't built for that reality, and network-based controls fall apart the moment data leaves the environment.

Virtru's Data Security Platform, built on the open Trusted Data Format (TDF) standard, wraps protection directly around the data itself. That means your Technology Control Plans can be enforced automatically — not just documented — and access can be revoked, audited, and re-scoped long after a file has been shared.

At AUECO, our higher-ed team will walk you through how peer institutions are using Virtru to:

• Prevent deemed exports by enforcing attribute-based access controls that check user nationality, role, and project affiliation before decryption
• Protect ITAR and EAR-controlled technical data in email, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Box, and Zendesk — without changing researcher workflow
• Satisfy CUI handling requirements under NIST SP 800-171, DFARS 7012, and the emerging CMMC 2.0 landscape
• Enable secure collaboration with foreign partners on fundamental research while keeping controlled portions of a project locked down
• Give your compliance team an audit trail of every access, share, forward, and revocation — evidence you can hand to sponsors, auditors, and OIG