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University’s Expertise Being Tapped for Cybersecurity Project

Might there be a better way to fend off cyberattacks, particularly among overworked defenders during an emergency? SSC Pacific, part of the U.S. Navy’s SPAWAR organization, wants to know — and the Navy office has tapped National University to help it research better ways to address the problem.

It seems that the tools that defenders get to fend off cyberattacks aren’t that easy to use, nor are they very intuitive. In some cases, operators have to use more than 75 tools. These might include specialized software (such as IDA Professional, Wireshark and VMware) or software that’s more familiar to consumer and business users (such as Microsoft Excel or Internet Explorer).

What’s more, defenders have to use these tools under stressful conditions.

“If we throw attacks at operators in a simulated network environment, are they catching them?” said lead researcher Robert Gutzwiller in an article distributed by SSC public affairs. “Are they catching them quickly? How hard was it for them to catch them? Is the software helping them or hindering their situation awareness of malicious activities?”

Gutzwiller holds a doctorate in cognitive psychology, and has produced papers on topics such as workload overload modeling and the human factors of cyber network defense.

In the end, the research team wants to create a list of recommendations for developers of cybersecurity tools, about what works best in real-world conditions, with operators that are not as invincible as superheroes, but are very human.

The Navy and National University are working under a CRADA — that’s cooperative research and development agreement — contract. This particular CRADA does not involve an exchange of funds. “Each organization will be funding their own research and will collaborate and share results,” an SSC Pacific spokeswoman said.

SPAWAR stands for Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. SSC Pacific is shorthand for SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific.

National University’s School of Engineering and Computing leads the project on the academic side. By the way, the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security have recognized National University’s cybersecurity program as a center of academic excellence in cyber defense education.

• • •

A Twin for Tern: DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, set aside an additional $17.8 million in mid-June for the unmanned Tern aircraft project. Northrop Grumman Corp. is taking the lead.

Engineers are trying to build a small aircraft able to fly off of small U.S. Navy ships. The Tern would take off and land like a helicopter, but fly like a conventional propeller plane. The Navy wants to use it as a spy aircraft and to deliver weapons.

Under the contract modification, the government is asking Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) to build a second Tern (short for Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node).

Rancho Bernardo is the center of Northrop Grumman’s unmanned aircraft business, though the company will do much of the work on Tern at El Segundo and Mojave.

As a result of this modification, the total amount of the agreement is increased from $132.5 million to $150.2 million. Northrop Grumman is paying for some of the costs; the latest deal increases the company’s share by $1 million to $40.4 million. Government funding increases by $16.7 million to $109.8 million.

The partners expect to complete the project by December 2018.

• • •

Radios Are in Demand: Cubic Corp. (NYSE: CUB) said in early July that it received a contract from SSC Pacific worth slightly less than $1 million to deliver radios for aircraft carriers. Cubic describes the electronics as an extremely high-speed wideband datalink that transmits signal and image intelligence data between reconnaissance aircraft sensors and associated surface ship processing systems.

While we are on the subject of radios, Carlsbad-based ViaSat Inc. said in late June that it has produced its 500th Link 16 small tactical terminal. The company said it is producing more than 20 terminals per month and expects to work its way up to 40 by year-end.

ViaSat (Nasdaq: VSAT) expects orders of several thousand over the next decade, said Ken Peterman, senior VP and GM of ViaSat’s Government Systems Division, in a prepared statement.

• • •

Short Takes: A U.S. Air Force purchase of one Osprey tiltrotor aircraft will bring about $370,000 of work to San Diego and $148,000 to El Cajon, the Pentagon announced July 7. The Air Force uses the Osprey for special operations. … The Navy launched its fifth MUOS satellite on June 24 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Program Executive Office for Space Systems at SPAWAR runs the MUOS program (the initials stand for Mobile User Objective System). The Navy has billed the satellite constellation as a set of cell towers in the sky for secure communications.

Send San Diego defense contracting news to bradg@sdbj.com.

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