CybersecurityHyperion cyber security technology receives commercialization award

Published 4 February 2016

The commercial licensing of a cybersecurity technology developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been recognized by the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) as a good example of moving technology to the marketplace. Hyperion, which has the capability automatically to analyze executable programs and recognize behaviors that signal malicious intent and vulnerabilities, was licensed to Virginia-based R&K Cyber Solutions, LLC, in late 2014.

The commercial licensing of a cybersecurity technology developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been recognized by the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) as a good example of moving technology to the marketplace.

Hyperion, which has the capability automatically to analyze executable programs and recognize behaviors that signal malicious intent and vulnerabilities, was licensed to Virginia-based R&K Cyber Solutions, LLC, in late 2014.

ORNL notes that the FLC is a network of federal laboratories dedicated to promoting and strengthening the commercialization of federal laboratory-developed technologies and expertise.

Hyperion’s behavior-based malware detection technology offers advantages over other cyber security methods. The technology’s novel software behavior computation approach is seen as an important advance in malware detection and software assurance as cyber threats become increasingly sophisticated.

“Our approach is better than signature detection, which only searches for patterns of bytes,” said ORNL’s Stacy Prowell, who led the Cyber Research Warfare team that developed the technology. “It’s easy for somebody to hide that — they can break it up and scatter it about the program so it won’t match any signature.”

Prowell, of ORNL’s Computational Sciences and Engineering Division, worked with David Sims of ORNL’s Science & Technology Partnerships organization to license the technology. Hyperion also received an R&D 100 Award from R&D Magazine in November.

Commercial Licensing of the Hyperion Cyber Security Computer Code” will be formally recognized with an excellence in technology transfer award at the FLC’s national meeting in April.

Funding for Hyperion was provided by ORNL’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development program, DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability’s Cybersecurity for Energy Delivery Systems program, Lockheed Martin and Applied Communication Sciences.

ORNL says that it is expected that Hyperion will help advance the energy sector’s vision of resilient energy delivery systems that are able to survive a cyber incident, as articulated in the Roadmap to Achieve Energy Delivery Systems Cybersecurity.