Cybersecurity

2017 NTTX Situation Manual

This exercise is a part of a two-day event including seminars/workshops and a tabletop exercise (TTX) geared toward examining issues related to cybersecurity impacting physical infrastructure systems on college and university campuses. The TTX portion of the event consists of a scenario-driven, facilitated discussion and is designed to examine roles, responsibilities, authorities, and capabilities to enhance the resilience of institutions of higher education.

Cybersecurity / Information Analysis R&D

S&T conducts and supports research, development, test and evaluation, and the transition of advanced cybersecurity and information assurance technologies to secure the nation’s current and future cyber and critical infrastructures. 

News Release: S&T Awards $750K to InferLink to Enhance Search Functionality of IMPACT Cybersecurity Research Database

DHS S&T has awarded a $750,000 contract to El Segundo, California-based InferLink Corporation to develop an advanced search functionality for the Information Marketplace for Policy and Analysis of Cyber-risk & Trust (IMPACT) cybersecurity research portal.

Leadership Tabletop Exercise (LTTX)

Leadership Tabletop Exercise for Institutions of Higher Education (LTTX) are half-day events hosted for campus leadership designed to highlight their role in managing institutional risk during emergency incidents. These executive events bring together campus leadership, local, state, and federal officials, and industry subject matter experts to simulate emergencies through tailored case studies on a range of threats.

The date and location of the next LTTX has yet to be determined. More detailed information on the LTTX will be available close to the event.

Snapshot: S&T TTP Program Moved 10 Technologies to Marketplace in FY17

What a year! Starting October 2016 through this past September, the DHS Science and Technology Directorate’s (S&T) Transition to Practice (TTP) program commercialized, spun off or released as open source 10 new cybersecurity technologies.

News Release: S&T Awards $350K to Spur Cybersecurity Info-Sharing

DHS S&T has awarded 418 Intelligence Corporation of Herndon, Virginia $350,000 to develop a forecasting platform that will help critical infrastructure owners and system operators share and keep abreast of the latest developments in cybersecurity protection.

S&T TDoS Fact Sheet

The public voice network has become the target of many attacks, including Telephony Denial of Service (TDoS), robocalls (automated telephone calls), SWATing (anonymously filing police reports to provoke a police raid) and bomb threats. TDoS is a flood of malicious inbound calls that target public-safety response systems such as 911. The Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) Distributed Denial of Service Defense (DDoSD) is working to shift the advantage from a DDoS attacker to the network administrator by developing the capability to authenticate callers and detect fraudulent call spoofing.

S&T Mobile Device Security Study

Mandated by the Cybersecurity Act of 2015, the “Study on Mobile Device Security” relied on significant input from mobile industry vendors, carriers, service providers and academic researchers.

S&T Distributed Denial of Service Defense Fact Sheet

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are used to render key resources unavailable. Hackers accomplish a DDoS attack by literally sending so much web traffic at a target that it is unable to function. A classic DDoS attack disrupts a financial institution’s website and temporarily blocks the ability of consumers to conduct online banking. A more strategic attack makes a key resource inaccessible during a critical period. The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) Distributed Denial of Service Defense (DDoSD) is working to increase deployment of best practices that would slow attack scale growth, seeking to defend networks against one terabit per second (Tbps) scale attacks through development of collaboration tools suitable for medium-scale organizations and working to defend emergency management systems—both current 911 and Next Generation 911 systems—from Telephony Denial of Service (TDoS) attacks.

S&T Cyber Physical Systems Security Fact Sheet

Automobiles, medical devices, building controls and the smart grid all are examples of cyber physical systems (CPS). Each includes smart networked systems with embedded sensors, processors and actuators that sense and interact with the physical world and support real-time, guaranteed performance in safety-critical applications. The Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) Cyber Security Division's Cyber Physical Systems Security project (CPSSEC) is working to develop cybersecurity technical guidance for critical infrastructure sectors facing CPS challenges.