Design Knowledge eyes avionics trusted computing and cyber security test and measurement research

July 2, 2018
U.S. Air Force researchers needed trusted computing and cyber security test and measurement capability for military mission-critical systems. They found their solution from The Design Knowledge Company in Fairborn, Ohio.

U.S. Air Force researchers needed trusted computing and cyber security test and measurement capability for military mission-critical systems. They found their solution from The Design Knowledge Company in Fairborn, Ohio.

Officials of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, announced a $24.9 million 7-year Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) phase II contract to Design Knowledge for the Innovative Cyber/Infrastructure Threat Assessment Environment (INCITE) Mission Assurance program.

Design Knowledge experts will carry out advanced research to advance microelectronic components assurance and assessment; assurance test and verification methodologies; situational awareness for mission assurance; decision support for cyber security vulnerability assessments; advanced malware protections research for mission-critical systems; and cyber threat situational awareness for insider threats.

Design Knowledge has been involved SBIR phase 1 and phase II of the INCITE program. The company has developed an integrated agile work environment to ingest, organize, and visualize unstructured and structured data.

This work environment enables users to identify, analyze, and reveal first-, second-, and third-order cyber effects and perform vulnerability analysis on avionics systems and military networks, and cyber infrastructure.

The work environment capitalizes on existing and proven simulation, analysis, data management, and visualization tools from Design Knowledge, as well as from Edaptive Computing Inc. in Dayton, Ohio, and from DMM Ventures Inc. in Yorktown, Va.

In the INCITE SBIR phase II project, Design Knowledge experts developed a multi-use, adaptable, user-friendly prototype demonstrator to measure the susceptibility or vulnerability of avionics and infrastructure to trusted computing threats like cyber attack, electronic parts tampering, and counterfeit components.

The work environment is designed to interface easily with infrastructure and avionics modeling tools, computer-aided design tools, circuit and system design tools, and other third-party simulation, design, and analysis tools, from system to component-level.

The program’s second phase was to develop, test, assess, document, and demonstrate the INCITE work environment’s capabilities using real-world data in an embedded avionics application and in an infrastructure scenario.

Now the company’s phase II work environment is ready for the INCITE program’s third phase, in which Design Knowledge experts will integrate the work environment into the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Avionics Vulnerability Assessment, Mitigation, and Protection (AVAMP) test bed.

On this contract Design Knowledge will do the work at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and should be finished by June 2025. For more information contact The Design Knowledge Company online at www.tdkc.com, or the Air Force Research Lab at www.wpafb.af.mil/AFRL.

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