PALO ALTO, Calif., 28 Dec. 2008. HP has been selected by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the central research and development organization for the U.S. Department of Defense, to develop a scalable network monitoring system.

The contract, valued at $3.6 million, calls upon HP to develop a scalable network intrusion detection system that provides visualization and defense against cyber threats.

The system, being developed by HP, detects threats using proactive technologies and by monitoring fluctuations in network traffic to improve real-time analysis as well as visualization.

"HP's scalable network monitoring system allows for a new, dynamic method of identifying suspicious data and detecting threats before they enter the system," says Mike Freeman, vice president, Federal Business, HP. "This system is one of the first of its kind to apply statistical physics to continuously monitor the defended networks and their environments."

The entire system is based on commercial off-the-shelf, midrange servers, which brings the total development cost down.