The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) awarded $750,000 to SecuLore Solutions, an Odenton, Md.-based cybersecurity company, to improve and increase the resiliency of the nation’s emergency communications infrastructure, including Next Generation 911 (NG911) technologies.
“Our nation’s emergency communications network is at risk to escalating cyber-attacks,” said Vincent Sritapan, S&T Program Manager. “We are undertaking this project to strengthen the cybersecurity firewalls protecting these critical communications networks that quite literally are the lifeline for our citizens who require first-responder assistance during an emergency.”
Through this research-and-development (R&D) project, SecuLore will use predictive analytics and collect cyber data to determine whether these resources can be used to improve the detection and elimination of cybersecurity attacks against emergency communications systems. If successful, SecuLore will add the new capability to its existing cybersecurity solutions to provide near-real-time behavioral threat analysis of the traffic hitting an emergency communications center’s network and provide recommended remediation steps that are based on the behavior and/or the type of malware. Seculore also would conduct one or more pilots with public safety agencies to help capture user feedback on their capabilities and help DHS better understand how security operations centers would deploy and manage the capability.
S&T’s Emergency Communications R&D program project supports the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which ensures federal, state, local, tribal and territorial agencies have the necessary plans, resources and training to support operable and advanced interoperable emergency communications.
“This project will complement CISA’s activities to improve the resilience of the nation’s critical emergency communications infrastructure,” said Robert Dew, Senior Technologist Advisor for CISA. “This project is a critical undertaking as the number of cyber-attacks continues to increase and the number of Next Generation 911 systems being deployed across the country grows. This work supports the Federal Communications Commission’s Task Force on the Optimal Public Safety Answering Point Architecture (TFOPA) recommendations, which identified NG911 cybersecurity as a critical issue. The TFOPA report calls for conducting pilots to better understand how Emergency Communications Cybersecurity Centers (EC3) could be created to better support public safety resiliency.”
