AFCEA International Honors Promising Cybersecurity Solutions With Awards
Cyber Solutions Showcase participants demonstrate creativity, cost consciousness and comprehension of military needs.
WASHINGTON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Three innovative cybersecurity technologies were recognized as outstanding solutions at AFCEA International's Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium (DCOS) Cyber Solutions Showcase last week. The association's Technology and Cyber committees evaluated nearly 60 proposals prior to the event and chose seven solutions to present to a panel of judges at the event. One winner was chosen in each of three categories: Most Innovative, Best Value and Best of Show.
Dispersive Technologies Incorporated won the Most Innovative award for its solution "Network Obfuscation to Confuse and Deceive the Adversary." With increasingly sophisticated and agile adversaries demonstrating their ability to launch cyber attacks, the company developed Dispersive Virtualized Networks. The technology enables the U.S. military to monitor adversaries' networks and websites anonymously.
LinQuest Corporation was presented with the Best of Show award for its "3-D Cyber Immersive Collaboration Environment." The company is developing a secured 3-D immersive collaboration environment (3D-ICE) for cyber analysts, leveraging gaming technology in which users are represented as avatars that can interact with big data analytics and/or real-time systems. 3D-ICE allows users to create a world with the necessary video feeds, data feeds, web interfaces, data visualizations and analytical tools. Once the crisis is over, the virtual world and its super metadata can be archived into the cloud.
Ultra Electronics, 3eTI, won the award for Best Value for its "CyberFence: Critical Infrastructure Protection" solution. The architecture affords military-grade cyber protection, as well as analysis, modeling and prediction capabilities for building systems. It enables facility operators to monitor and address issues securely and remotely within the grid, saving time, energy and resources.
AFCEA's 60-person Technology Committee vetted the 57 submissions and narrowed them to seven to be judged at DCOS. At the symposium, 12 committee members reviewed the seven finalists using a 1- to 5-point scoring system in three areas: innovation, cost savings and use of commercial or proprietary technologies. Jim Griggs, AFCEA's vice president, CIO and CTO, explains that the Best of Show winner had the best numeric average score in all three categories.
Griggs says that he believes the three winning solutions were each unique in some way. For example, the Network Obfuscation to Confuse and Deceive the Adversary solution offers a new way of hiding endpoints from cyberthreats on an ongoing basis using unique IP routing technologies.
CyberFence is a simple hardware-based solution to fence off client computers from cyber threats. "Its automatic learning system, which enables easy deployment, was important here. Plug it in, let it learn for a few days, then lock it down. Although a hardware solution might be an expensive investment upfront, it saves on the deployment and management end," he explains.
The 3D Cyber Immersive Collaboration Environment was unique among all of the submissions, Griggs shares. The solution has virtual reality tie-in, which is very current, he says.
Griggs has some straightforward advice for companies planning to participate in the competition in the future. "Make sure your written abstract addresses the three key criteria: innovation, value and COTS," he states.
Additional coverage of the Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium, including video and audio recordings, is available online.
AFCEA International, established in 1946, is a non-profit non-lobbying membership association serving the military, government, industry and academia. Join online.
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