SHIFT5, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: AF193-CSO1

Description

The 661st Aeronautical Systems Squadron (661 AESS) provides critical air support for sensitive DoD missions within an austere, hostile, global environment. Due to their mission profile, 661 AESS faces increased cyber risk on their aircraft and requires a cyber-defense solution. This solution must detect and alert against anomalous behavior within critical embedded computer systems onboard the aircraft. Currently, 661 AESS and other Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) squadrons have no insight into the cyber health of their systems, which undermines system trust and confidence. Further, their maintenance personnel and supporting MDTs have great difficulty discerning cyberattacks from maintenance problems. Recognizing that aircraft regularly operating in contested space are susceptible to cyberattack, 661 AESS is the ideal partner to demonstrate solutions to the following Air Force needs. Many Air Force weapons systems have little or no protection from cyberattacks. Adversaries can degrade, disable, disrupt, deny, destroy or manipulate entire fleets of weapon systems. The 661st Aeronautical Systems Squadron (661 AESS) provides critical air support for sensitive DoD missions within an austere, hostile, global environment. Due to their mission profile, 661 AESS faces increased cyber risk on their aircraft and requires a cyber-defense solution. This solution must detect and alert against anomalous behavior within critical embedded computer systems onboard the aircraft. Currently, 661 AESS and other Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) squadrons have no insight into the cyber health of their systems, which undermines system trust and confidence. Further, their maintenance personnel and supporting MDTs have great difficulty discerning cyberattacks from maintenance problems. Recognizing that aircraft regularly operating in contested space are susceptible to cyberattack, 661 AESS is the ideal partner to demonstrate solutions to the following Air Force needs. Many Air Force weapons systems have little or no protection from cyberattacks. Adversaries can degrade, disable, disrupt, deny, destroy or manipulate entire fleets of weapon systems. To mitigate these cyber vulnerabilities, Shift5 proposes integrating Shift5 IntakeTM, EngineTM, and Gauge ClusterTM for continuous monitoring, alerting, and incident response. This suite of solutions will allow Air Force operators, maintenance crews, MDTs, and analysts to detect, analyze, and isolate cyberattacks. Serial data will be collected and analyzed to provide real-time alerting in the event of a cyberattack, stored and transmitted (as required) for further analysis by MDTs. A single compact avionic interface computer can support this without changes to existing weapon system architecture, and supports protocols such as MIL-STD-1553, J1939, ARINC 429, or custom protocols.