Award: SBIR Phase II for Topic OSD09-IA1

Clear Hat Consulting has been awarded a Phase II contract based on their Phase 1 effort for the topic OSD09-IA1: Real-time Adversarial Characterization and Adaptive Software Protection Countermeasures. This topic focuses on the development of adaptive software protection technology capable of enhancing system survivability in the presence of sophisticated, ongoing attacks. Properties that increase survivability include resistance to attacks, the recognition of attacks and resulting damage, the recovery of essential services following an attack, and the ability to adapt to minimize the damage from future attacks. This research is drawing on concepts from the biological immune system to design a set of cyber threat assessment and response algorithms and capabilities. Our final product will be an adaptive, light weight, multi-layered response system capable of assessing cyber threats in real-time so that they can be aborted before they cause damage or otherwise impact system operation. We are considering a broad scope of threats in our design. These include both known and unknown threats operating at both high and low levels in the system. Gathering information about attack dynamics during the threat assessment process is also a secondary goal of this effort. This information will help facilitate a rapid forensic analysis in the event that compromise does occur. We expect our target market will include a variety of government and commercial customers which require 1) the protection of critical software assets and 2) the ability to survive potentially advanced, targeted attacks. Other benefits include minimizing costs associated with system down-time and intellectual property loss associated with cyber attacks.

[more on Phase I effort]