IARPA extends deadline for Office of Safe and Secure Operations BAA

On March 9, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) announced that it has extended the deadline for responses to the Office of Safe and Secure Operations’ broad agency announcement (BAA) to April 9.

 IARPA invests in high-risk, high-payoff research that has the potential to provide our nation with an overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries. This BAA solicits abstracts/proposals for the Office of Safe and Secure Operations (SSO).
SSO focuses on the Intelligence Community’s (IC) ability to operate freely and effectively in an often hostile and increasingly interdependent and resource-constrained environment. While some of our challenges stem from adversary activity, others emerge coincidentally with changes in technology or business practices. SSO programs are most often not application-specific, but concentrate instead on creating the foundations of a powerful and robust infrastructure for the IC that can maintain its integrity over time. This BAA solicits research that explores or demonstrates the feasibility of revolutionary concepts in computation, trust establishment and maintenance, and detecting and deflecting hostile intent. Examples include:

• Computational methods, including algorithms, based on models other than digital Turing machines and platforms other than CMOS whose attributes are matched to efficient or secure solution of intelligence problems (e.g., optical, analog, biomolecular, neuromorphic, quantum, and hybrid computing systems);
  • Novel ideas for technologies enabling energy-efficient computation beyond the efficiency projected for end-of-roadmap silicon, as well as strategies for using existing computing technologies to compute with lower power budgets;
  • Approaches to operating securely with imperfect equipment, error-prone users, compromised components and/or within an environment of unknown trustworthiness. Constructing systems that can perform reliable and secure computations when some fraction of their components is unreliable or insecure;
  • Optimization methods at both the component and system levels;
  • New algorithms and protocols that take advantage of quantum entanglement to perform tasks that are inefficient or impossible with classical algorithms and/or current platforms;
  • Methods (including compilers and programming languages) for performing complicated computations securely, e.g. multi-party secure functional computation and full homomorphic encryption, but with low overhead;
  • Detection, classification, and mitigation of attempts by adversaries to compromise safety and security, including, but not limited to penetration and manipulation of electronic infrastructure; and
  • Assurance techniques that take advantage of emergent enterprise architectural constructs, e.g. software-defined networking, multi-tenancy, virtual hosting.

This announcement seeks research ideas for topics that are not addressed by emerging or ongoing IARPA programs or other published IARPA solicitations. It is primarily, but not solely, intended for early stage research that may lead to larger, focused programs through a separate BAA in the future, so periods of performance generally will not exceed 12 months.

Offerors should demonstrate that their proposed effort has the potential to make revolutionary, rather than incremental, improvements to intelligence capabilities. Research that primarily results in evolutionary improvement to the existing state of practice is specifically excluded.

Full updated information is available here.

Source: FedBizOpps