Joanna Crews
The Department of Homeland Security science and technology directorate has awarded Red Balloon Security a $746,756 Small Business Innovation Research contract to update its Symbiote Defense intrusion detection system for the agency.
DHS said Thursday the New York-based company will inject four new features to the system as part of the Hybrid Prediction for Embedded Malware project under the two-year SBIR Phase II contract.
Red Balloon will design, develop and implement an attack graph to catalog system defenses, a live-hardening function to capture malware attack details, a real-time monitoring capacity to extract forensic details during malware operations and functionality for malware forensic data display and post-processing analysis to enable system or network operators to respond when human analysis is not available.
Feedback from users and results from the company’s test and pilot programs will work to further refine the updated embedded malware detection system.
The Internet Measurement and Attack Modeling project of the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency‘s cybersecurity division manages the hybrid prediction research and development project.
Division Director Douglas Maughan said the project aims to identify and stop malware before it compromises data on devices and systems.
S&T IMAM Program Manager Ann Cox added the agency anticipates Red Balloon’s enhancement to help accelerate the removal of malicious software by boosting network and system operators’ reaction time.
DHS S&T’s SBIR competitive contract awards program commenced in 2004 and aims to further involve U.S. small businesses in R&D for the government and enable the commercialization of accomplished SBIR-funded projects.
