CybersecurityInnovative technologies for preventing cyberattacks

Published 29 December 2017

The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has licensed three of its most unusual technologies for preventing cyberattacks to Cynash Inc., a startup company funded by IP Group, an intellectual property commercialization company. Cynash was formed specifically to bring these three cyber protection technologies to market to provide a powerful new approach to the detection and prevention of cyberattacks. Two of the technologies, DigitalAnts and MLSTONES, are inspired by nature and biology. The third, SerialTap, addresses vulnerabilities inherent in remotely controlled physical systems common in infrastructure and manufacturing.

The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has licensed three of its most unusual technologies for preventing cyberattacks to Cynash Inc., a startup company funded by IP Group, an intellectual property commercialization company. Cynash was formed specifically to bring these three cyber protection technologies to market to provide a powerful new approach to the detection and prevention of cyberattacks.

Cynash intends to integrate these technologies into a suite of products and services to enhance cybersecurity in private enterprise, the public sector and industrial control systems.

PNNL notes that two of the technologies, DigitalAnts and MLSTONES, are inspired by nature and biology.

The third, SerialTap, addresses vulnerabilities inherent in remotely controlled physical systems common in infrastructure and manufacturing.

The Ants go marching
DigitalAnts, was inspired by the power of ants swarming to protect their colonies. In this case, the colonies are large scale networks or even connected devices such as phones and sensors and many others that make up the entire Internet-of-Things and can provide a foothold for cybercriminals. Distributed ant-like software agents wander across networks from device to device to detect suspicious behavior by watching types of information, such as network bandwidth or power consumption. Like their natural counterparts, DigitalAnts throw down markers much like pheromones to attract other ants to the location of concern. This concept of indirect coordination, known as stigmergy, allows rapid validation of an anomaly by several independent agents. Once an anomaly is confirmed, the DigitalAnts technology alerts users and other systems to take appropriate action.