For Immediate Release
DHS Science & Technology Press Office
Contact: John Verrico, (202) 254-2385
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) awarded a $629,993 contract to Waverley Labs of Waterford, Virginia. Waverley will create new tools to defend against large and sophisticated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. The project titled “An Open Source Project for a Software-Defined Perimeter to Defend Cloud Apps from DDoS” was awarded through Broad Agency Announcement HSHQDC-14-R- B00017 and will become part of the DHS S&T Cyber Security Division’s larger Distributed Denial of Service Defenses (DDoSD) program.
DDoS attacks are used to render key resources unavailable. A classic DDoS attack might disrupt an organization’s website and temporarily block a consumer’s ability to access the site. A more strategic attack makes a key resource inaccessible during a critical period. Prominent DDoS attacks have been conducted against financial institutions, news organizations, providers of internet security resources, and government agencies. Any organization that relies on network resources is considered a potential target, and the current environment offers many advantages to the attacker.
“Network availability is essential for modern organizations to function,” said DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology Dr. Reginald Brothers. “The DDoSD program will be developing innovative technologies through an open source platform to make them affordable to both public and private sector organizations.”
Waverley Labs will work collaboratively with the international Cloud Security Alliance to develop new tools and techniques for defending against DDoS attacks. The key results of this effort will be made available to the general public through open source software releases. Once this open source project is complete, federal organizations, critical infrastructure providers, and organizations that rely on cloud delivery will all be able use the results to develop cloud services that are resistant to DDoS attacks.
“The S&T Cyber Security Division aims to make research results that are both relevant and widely available to government and industry,” said Dr. Dan Massey, Cyber Security Division DDoSD Program Manager. “The Waverley team includes industry advisors from the start of technology development, and makes the end results easily available as open source software.”
With the success of launching this R&D project, S&T looks forward to securing the nation’s networks by anticipating and defending against DDoS attacks.
For more information, visit scitech.dhs.gov/cyber-research, or email SandT-Cyber-Liaison@hq.dhs.gov.
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