The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) Cyber Security Division (CSD) hosted the 2016 Research and Development (R&D) Showcase where members of the public, industry, academia, and cybersecurity professionals gathered to observe and discuss CSD-funded research, enabling collaboration among the researchers and government agencies and connecting the technologies to transition partners.
“DHS S&T Cyber Security Division’s mission is to transition cybersecurity R&D technologies and products from the research community into the marketplace,” said DHS S&T Director of Cyber Security Division Douglas Maughan. “The goal of the R&D Showcase was to present our early, mid and mature technologies to cybersecurity professionals looking to deploy these cutting-edge innovations into their enterprise. With this event we were able to engage almost 700 cybersecurity experts over a three day period.”
The showcase featured a technology demonstration and poster session of CSD’s research portfolio comprised of nine innovative transition-ready solutions and two collaboration projects selected from the division’s list of developed technologies. These technologies, along with the others featured throughout the day, represented solutions to some of today’s most complex cybersecurity challenges, as well as more common cybersecurity issues:
- A Watchdog System for Internet Routing (presented by Christos Papadopoulos, Colorado State University) – a monitoring system for critical Internet routing infrastructure in which the technology’s performer identifies critical services and monitors these critical services from locations around the world to provide real-time alerts for new events.
- Project iVe: Forensics for Vehicle (presented by Ben LeMere, Berla Corporation) - a technology that currently supports forensic data extraction (such as recent destinations, favorite locations, call logs, contact lists, SMS messages, emails, pictures, videos, social media feeds, and the navigation history of everywhere the vehicle has been). This technology prevents valuable digital evidence from being compromised in the case of criminal activity.
- Protecting Emergency Services from Complex Distributed Telephone Denial of Service (presented by Mark Collier, Secure Logix) – A defense against the common attack referred to as Telephone Denial of Service (TDoS,) comprised of a flood of malicious inbound calls. This technology targets public safety numbers, such as 911 and emergency responders, and uses a series of filters to differentiate legitimate from TDoS calls to quickly treat malicious calls. When coordinated with a physical terrorist attack, the TDoS attack would be disruptive and result in a large number of people in need not being able to get through to emergency services.
“DHS S&T’s cybersecurity R&D portfolio is very broad – addressing on a variety of cybersecurity topics – which will not only provide solutions to the Department, but will help provide a positive impact on the larger cyber landscape,” explained DHS S&T CSD Program Manager and R&D Showcase lead Daniel Massey.
DHS S&T projects are the future of cybersecurity and it is the connection between the public and private sector that events such as the 2016 Research and Development Showcase will provide these critical technological advancements to our nation’s security.
For more information on CSD’s projects, visit their webpage at dhs.gov/cyber-research or email SandT-Cyber-Liaison@hq.dhs.gov.