Tackling the Cybersecurity Challenges of Tomorrow

As the digital world expands, so do the cyberthreats—and both new systems and existing technologies require protection and continuous monitoring against adversaries that will only get smarter and bolder.

Peraton has strategically expanded its capabilities beyond traditional IT systems into operational technology (OT) to address the growing intersection between OT, industrial control systems (ICS) and cybersecurity. This demonstrates a commitment to ensuring government customers are equipped to support the nation’s critical infrastructure while also providing them with ‘nuts and bolts’ cyber operations.

Cybersecurity is national security, and Peraton is committed to developing leading-edge solutions that address the challenges facing mission-critical networks, platforms, services, and infrastructure, including:

  • A system to close a serious vulnerability impacting weapons and avionics systems
  • Continuous monitoring for critical infrastructure that hunts cyber threats
  • Tools to detect system threats and anomalies without tipping off attackers
  • Digital twins for testing agency network resiliency

Challenge:

Increase the cyber survivability of military platforms

Many major weapons and avionics systems rely on a nearly 50-year-old technology—the MIL-STD 1553 serial data bus—that was never designed with cybersecurity in mind and is demonstrably insecure. While the 1553 bus enables critical components to communicate, including radar, transponders, and navigation systems, it is susceptible to cyberattacks that can propagate with catastrophic results—mission failure, loss of life and materials, and even the potential for an adversary to harness control of a warfighting system.

The Bus Defender™ product line protects against diverse attacks launched or propagated over the 1553 bus. Bus Defender blocks attacks that threaten today’s platforms and is ready to support the networked military envisioned in the DoD’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept. Bus Defender blocks run-time attacks, including zero-day attacks and known vulnerabilities, without requiring any modifications to 1553 platforms or to systems software or configuration. Bus Defender has been successfully tested by the U.S. Army and other services to protect networked vehicles against cyberattacks.

Challenge:

Defend the energy grid from cyberattacks

The energy sector is a prime target of cyberattacks that can disrupt, corrupt, or deny electric service, causing extended service outages or malicious manipulations that threaten lives and property. EnergyDefender™, part of the SecureSmart™ solution line, detects, troubleshoots, and remediates issues across traditional control networks, infrastructure, and wireless field systems before operations are impacted.

Using artificial intelligence and human-machine interfaces, EnergyDefender can provide a grid-state of present conditions to monitor the cyber health, performance, and trustworthiness of energy management systems as well as supervisory control and data acquisition systems. This allows operations, communication, and decision-making to continue in the event of a power or cyber outage.

Challenge:

Detect hackers without tipping them off

Imagine a portable device that allows you to monitor systems for compromise without being detected by hackers. Peraton’s cyber emissions monitor, known as the ‘Magic Wand’, is an anomaly detection system that is part of the SecureSmart solution line.

Magic Wand is an invisibility cloak for cyber protection. It enables covert detection of diverse types of compromises—a hacker cannot tell that the system is being monitored, nor can they discover whether an attack is suspected or detected. The system monitors cyber emissions from a Rogowski coil antenna attached near protected devices across electric distribution, Internet of Things, and industrial control systems networks. Because the Magic Wand has no electrical path between the antenna and devices being monitored, it can provide non-intrusive monitoring, diagnosis, and repair without being detected by cyber attackers.

Challenge:

Improve how a network will respond to cyberattacks

How can you make sure your cyber defenses are strong and ready to protect your network? CyberVAN™ is a high-fidelity cyber range supporting large-scale experimentation that allows realistic training for cyber incidents, validation of cyber tools before deployment, and performance analysis before system implementation. This cyber virtual assured network (VAN) environment also provides realistic modeling of large, heterogenous networks, including enterprise, military, hybrid, and space networks. Users can design their scenario with a graphical user interface and access CyberVAN through a web portal to manage deployment and archiving.

CyberVAN is flexible enough to support dozens of use cases such as cyber experimentation, operational planning, validation, training, and evaluation. CyberVAN delivers sophisticated capabilities for tactical and strategic environments by enabling arbitrary applications to communicate transparently across a simulated network.