United States Perspecta Tender

Perspecta Inc. announced that its innovative research arm Perspecta Labs played an integral role in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agencys DARPA Liberty Eclipse Phase II exercise in collaboration with the Department of Energy and the Department of Homeland Security to test grid recovery tools during a staged multi-faceted cyberattack on a U.S. power grid. The event took place on Plum Island N.Y.The realistic exercise actually replicated a cyberattack and monitored its recovery in real-time. Liberty Eclipse Phase II is the fourth and largest thus far in a series of exercises under DARPAs Rapid Attack Detection Isolation and Characterization Systems RADICS research program. The RADICS objective was to develop technologies for detecting and responding to cyberattacks on critical U.S. infrastructure with an ultimate goal of enabling cyber and power engineers the ability to restore electrical service within seven days in the event of a major attack.We are proud to have played such a significant role in this critical exercise said Mac Curtis president and CEO of Perspecta. At Perspecta we are driven by a passion for innovation which fueled our research lab Perspecta Labs. It is through exercises like this that we are able to transform our research into real solutions to not only solve our customers most unique and complex challenges but keep our nation safe as well.During the seven day exercise performers on the RADICS program were tasked with using performer-developed tools to provide comprehensive grid situational awareness restore supervisory control and data acquisition SCADA and network infrastructure cleanse substations and defeat active adversaries to establish two diverse paths in order to re-energize interconnect and synchronize two utility operators in a black start scenario. Our experience with developing solutions to protect the power grid gave us unique qualifications to support DARPA during this exercise said Petros Mouchtaris Ph.D. president of Perspecta Labs. As leaders in cybersecurity awareness monitoring and assessment services we were able to validate the success of our research and tools while assisting our customer DARPA in achieving this major program milestone.In the exercise Perspecta Labs tested various technologies transitioning to commercial use under the companys SecureSmart offering including the SHERLOC cyber-weapon hunting system featuring a new grid state consistency analyzer called Jolt that integrates ground truth feeder state from Advanced Meter Infrastructure as a telemetry source and the MANTESSA cyber-physical early detection and situational awareness system featuring novel machine intelligence techniques and statistical inference of out-of-band measurements field reports and other data sources. Perspecta Labs also supported BAE Systems on the set up of a Secure Emergency Network. The companys Distributed Assured and Dynamic Configuration DADC tool was used to efficiently generate error-free configurations for that network.As a result of the exercise the Perspecta Labs team gained actionable insight from utilities observers and participants to improve the usability expand the capabilities and continue the transition of its SHERLOC and MANTESSA solutions. As a leader in smart grid security and monitoring the company has been a major contributor on the RADICS program conducting research and delivering technologies in three of five technical areas for situational awareness secure communications and threat detection and characterization.