BAE Systems was awarded a contract by the U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) worth a total lifetime value of $11.4 million to develop forecasting and early detection of cyber attacks technologies for the U.S military and intelligence agencies, the company said Thursday.
While current cyber defense methods generally react to attacks already underway or completed, the IARPA Cyber-attack Automated Unconventional Sensor Environment (CAUSE) program seeks to create technologies that will accurately predict threats and automatically provide timely warnings of cyber threats against participating organizations. The new methods aim to allow for defensive actions to respond ahead of attacks.
BAE said it will develop new predictive methods that combine existing advanced intrusion detection capabilities with unconventional publicly available data sources, which leverages sources not usually associated with cybersecurity. Their researchers will also seek to identify leading indicators of an attack when sifting through “vast, noisy external streams of data and then correlate related data from different sources to generate accurate, actionable warnings,” the company said.
“This award builds on our expertise in cybersecurity and multi-intelligence sensor data fusion technologies, including the areas of machine learning, event detection, correlation, and prediction. Our team will also provide insight into adversary motivations and actions, which will enhance our prediction models,” Anne Taylor, director of BAE’s cyber and communications technologies research group, said in a statement.
BAE’s teammates on this IARPA program include StratumPoint, Digital Operatives LLC, and professor David Maimon at the University of Maryland. The company’s work will be based at its Arlington, Va., facility.