Two win $1.8M contract to thwart advanced persistent threats in networks

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded a $1.8 million contract to two companies to verify a security monitoring system.

The winners are:

• Galois
• Guardtime Federal

Under the contract, the two companies will verify the ability of Guardtime Federal’s Keyless Signature Infrastructure to detect advanced persistent threats that are hidden in networks. These threats undermine network security and can cover their tracks by removing evidence from system log files, Galois said in a reelase.

Work under the contract will advance the state of formal verification tools and all blockchain-based integrity monitoring systems.

“Formal verification has evolved considerably over the past several years, but has only recently matured enough to tackle production-level software,” said Stephen Magill, Research Lead for Software Analysis at Galois, in a release.

“This collaborative effort seeks to advance our understanding of the role that integrity analysis plays in system security and lead to improvements in formal verification tools and methods that will be applicable to other existing systems,” he said.