IARPA to host proposers’ day conference in anticipation of new cybersecurity contract solicitation

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) will host a Proposers’ Day Conference for the Cyber-attack Automated Unconventional Sensor Environment (CAUSE) Program on January 21, 2015, in anticipation of the release of a new solicitation in support of the Program. The Conference will be held from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM EST in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. The purpose of the Conference will be to provide introductory information on CAUSE and the research problems that the Program aims to address, to respond to questions from potential proposers, and to provide a forum for potential proposers to present their capabilities and identify potential team partners.

Approaches to cyber defense typically focus on post-mortem analysis of the various attack vectors utilized by adversaries. As attacks have evolved and increased over the years, established approaches (e.g., signature-based detection, anomaly detection) have not adequately enabled cybersecurity practitioners to get ahead of these threats. This has led to an industry that has invested heavily in analyzing the effects of cyber-attacks instead of analyzing and mitigating the “cause” of cyber-attacks.

The CAUSE Program seeks to develop cyber-attack forecasting methods and detect emerging cyber phenomena to assist cyber defenders with the earliest detection of a cyber-attack (e.g., Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), successful spearphishing, successful drive-by, remote exploitation, unauthorized access, reconnaissance). The CAUSE Program aims to develop and validate unconventional multi-disciplined sensor technology (e.g., actor behavior models, black market sales) that will forecast cyber-attacks and complement existing advanced intrusion detection capabilities. Anticipated innovations include: methods to manage and extract huge amounts of streaming and batch data, the application and introduction of new and existing features from other disciplines to the cyber domain, and the development of models to generate probabilistic warnings for future cyber events. Successful proposers will combine cutting-edge research with the ability to develop robust forecasting capabilities from multiple sensors not typically used in the cyber domain.

The CAUSE Program will consist of both unclassified and optional classified research activities and expects to draw upon the strengths of academia and industry through collaborative teaming. It is anticipated that teams will be multidisciplinary and might include computer scientists, data scientists, social and behavioral scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, content extraction experts, information theorists, and cyber-security subject matter experts having applied experience with cyber capabilities.

Contracting Office Address:

Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity
Washington, District of Columbia 20511
United States

Primary Point of Contact:

Robert Rahmer
Program Manager
dni-iarpa-baa-15-06@iarpa.gov

Source: IARPA