Chantilly, VA-based Perspecta Inc. announced on November 13 that its innovative research arm, Perspecta Labs, was awarded a prime contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to support the Configuration Security (ConSec) program. The contract, which represents new work for the company, has a base value of $5.4M and consists of three phases over a three-and-a-half year performance period.
The goal of the ConSec program is to develop technologies that can automatically generate, deploy, and enforce configurations of components and subsystems for use in military platforms, critical infrastructure and network-connected systems for the Internet of Things. The configurations must deliver needed functionality and performance while also mitigating vulnerabilities and minimizing the attack surface.
“Perspecta Labs will draw on its rich portfolio of research and development in machine learning and cybersecurity to deliver this work,” said Petros Mouchtaris, PhD, president of Perspecta Labs. “We are excited to bring our innovative techniques to identify, correct and prevent configuration errors in complex networks and distributed systems to our DARPA partner in support of their mission to improve security to critical military and commercial platforms.”
On the program, the Perspecta Labs team will design, develop, demonstrate, test and deliver the Optimized Context-specific Configuration for Attack Surface Minimization (OCCAM) system. OCCAM will automatically generate correct and secure configurations, rapidly and at scale, along with human-readable supporting evidence to facilitate transition of the platform to the improved configuration. Correct configurations are critical for the efficient and secure operations of systems.
Source: Perspecta
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