Scalable Network Technologies awarded contract to advance cyber attack testing for military networks

Scalable Network Technologies, Inc. (SNT), which engages in wireless network evaluation, announced on August 18 that the company was awarded a project from the Test & Evaluation / Science and Technology Program at the Test Resource Management Center, which reports directly to the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. 

Named StealthNet, the project provides a real-time, hardware-in-the-loop capability for simulation of cyber-threats to the entire net-centric infrastructure. This new capability is designed to address an existing gap in the Department of Defense (DOD) testing infrastructure to realistically test the vulnerabilities and resilience of Blue Force communications against sophisticated cyber-attacks. This is particularly relevant in networks that include both current Force and Future Force networks spanning ground, air and satellite components. 

StealthNet will provide the fundamental science and technology advances to mitigate this gap and includes a transition plan for the resulting capability to be incorporated in the testing infrastructure of the U.S. Army. 

SNT will design, prototype and demonstrate StealthNet's capability to stimulate Blue Force tactical and Global Information Grid (GIG)-based communication networks with a diverse set of cyber-threats in a Live, Virtual and Constructive (LVC) environment. 

In addition, the company will evaluate the effectiveness of the threats in disrupting Blue Force communications via key performance indicators, i.e. bandwidth, reliability, delay and quality of service metrics. StealthNet will leverage existing TRL-3 and TRL-4 research on information operations into a comprehensive and modular TRL-6 cyber-warfare simulation capability that can be incorporated into the net-centric battle space testing environment. 

"Current simulations supporting the net-centric test battlespace do not accurately represent the impact of cyber threats and information operations," said Dr. Rajive Bagrodia, CEO of SNT. "StealthNet will help mitigate the risks that deployed net-centric systems will fail in unpredictable ways. It will also help develop and test cyber defense strategies that will be effective in protecting Blue Force communications. The fundamental Science & Technology that will be advanced with this project addresses a vulnerability gap of high importance for the test & training communities." 

Given the importance of net-centricity as the evolving doctrine for the next generation of U.S. DoD, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Cyber Command and intelligence agency programs, new modeling, planning and management, and test and evaluation tools are required to ensure network operability and accuracy. SNT's emulation technology provides a less costly and substantially more effective environment for analysis and evaluation of net-centric protocols, applications, devices, services and training systems.