Three Firms Awarded DARPA Contracts to Help Improve ‘Air-Gapping’ Systems

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded General Electric, Galois and Northrop Grumman separate contracts to explore new strategies to protect “high risk” data flowing between the Department of Defense’s classified and unclassified information technology systems, Nextgov reported Thursday.

DARPA made the awards through the Guaranteed Architecture for Physical Security program, which seeks new software and hardware designs for air-gapping systems designed to protect and isolate sensitive data from other parts of the department’s IT infrastructure and help administrators monitor the movement of data.

General Electric received an $8.6M contract from DARPA a day after the agency awarded Galois a $7.3M contract through the GAPS program. Northrop secured a $12.7M contract in May. DARPA plans to make an investment of up $54.4M to fund projects under the GAPS program, according to the solicitation.