Creating a new methodology for real-time cyber security monitoring

(Black PR Wire) -- U2opia Technology, a consortium of technology and administrative executives with extensive experience in both industry and defense, has exclusively licensed a package of two technologies from the Department of Energy (DOE) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) that offers a new method for advanced cyber security monitoring in real-time.

“Identifying and quickly responding to attempted cyber security attacks is an urgent need across government and industry,” said Susan Hubbard, Deputy for Science and Technology at ORNL. “ORNL’s leadership in cyber resilience has led to the development of two powerful tools that will enable a more secure business environment.”

What’s New About This Method

The licensing package pairs two technologies developed in ORNL’s Cyber Resilience and Intelligence Division: Situ, a system for identifying and visualizing suspicious behavior from streaming cyber security data, and Heartbeat, a system that collects power trace measurements directly from the hardware to identify changes.

U2opia Leadership

U2opia, a woman-, minority- and disabled veteran-led company, led by Maurice Singleton III, the Chief Executive Officer, and Chaired by Joaneane Smith. Over the last 23 years, Smith’s information technology solutions company, GCS, based just outside of New Orleans, in Harvey Louisiana, has successfully executed multiple assignments on behalf of the U.S. Navy, Army, Air Force, the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that have garnered multiple awards, including the USDA Office of Procurement and Property Management HUBZone — Historically Underutilized Business Zone — Contractor of the Year. 

U2opia Lab Partnership

“ORNL will help us become one of the premier organizations in the country in cyber space. Special thanks to the scientists at ORNL, as well as the Small Business Office at ORNL and DOE headquarters. They deserve special recognition for being our champions,” said Smith.

One product, developed by a team led by John Goodall, combines anomaly detection and data visualization to provide a distributed, scalable, streaming platform for discovering and explaining suspicious behavior to enhance situation awareness. Situ helps network operators discover and understand events that would otherwise go undetected. It reduces huge volumes of network data to a manageable number of events to be examined. This powerful tool is currently used at ORNL to detect abnormal cyber events.

The other product, developed by a team led by Stacy Prowell, detects attacks by focusing on the physical behavior of the device being protected. The Heartbeat system collects power trace measurements directly from the hardware, is invisible to malware, and is resilient to internet service interruption. Heartbeat offers efficiency, scalability, and flexibility by implementing a data collection process with low computational requirements, is fast, and uses mechanisms that are present in almost all modern computing systems.

ORNL’s technologies are integrated into U2opia’s anomaly detection system to deliver advanced security capabilities with an artificial intelligence-informed visualization tool. The software can be deployed quickly with no added hardware and limited human engagement. “With these new protocols that are unknown to ‘bad actors,’ it is our intention to improve the online security of Shared-Services and Cloud computing with proprietary software.” said Maurice Singleton III, the Founder of the consortium.

The data visualization development team includes Kelly Huffer, Joel Reed and Dave Richardson. The technology was supported by funding through ORNL’s Lab Directed Research and Development program, the Department of Defense, DOE and DHS. Heartbeat was supported through the lab’s Technology Innovation Program.

For more information about ORNL’s intellectual property in information technology and communications, email ORNL Partnerships or call 865-574-1051.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

For more information on U2opia Technology, please contact us using U2opiatech.com.

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