Network Technology

The February 2011 Federal Cloud Computing Strategy released by the U.S. Chief Information Officer reinforces the United States Government’s plans to move information technology away from traditional workstations and toward cloud computing environments. Where compelling incentives to do this exist, security implications of concentrating sensitive data and computation into computing clouds have yet to be fully addressed. The perimeter defense focus of traditional security solutions is not sufficient to secure existing enclaves. It could be further marginalized in cloud environments where there is a huge concentration of homogeneous hosts on high-speed networks without internal checks, and with implicit trust among hosts within those limited perimeter defenses.

The Mobile Hotspots program envisions air, mobile and fixed assets that provide a gigabit-per-second tactical millimeter-wave backbone network extending to the lowest-echelon warfighters.

The explosive growth of global digital connectivity has opened new possibilities for designing and conducting social science research. Once limited by practical constraints to experiments involving just a few dozen participants-often university students or other easily available groups-or to correlational studies of large datasets without any opportunity for determining causation, scientists can now engage thousands of diverse volunteers online and explore an expanded range of important topics and questions.

PCAS seeks to fundamentally increase Close Air Support effectiveness by enabling dismounted ground agents and combat aircrews to share real-time situational awareness and weapons systems data.

The goal of the RADICS program is to develop innovative technologies for detecting and responding to cyber-attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure, especially those parts essential to DoD mission effectiveness. DARPA is interested specifically in early warning of impending attacks, situation awareness, network isolation and threat characterization in response to a widespread and persistent cyber-attack on the power grid and its dependent systems.