Army Cyber Innovation Challenge Industry Day

Department of the Army Assistant Secretary for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology (ASAALT) is holding an Industry Day on May 28 to engage industry and academia in discussion on a Cyber Innovation Challenge that leads to an OTA-based funding award. 

The Industry Day addresses how the Army plans to use the Section 845 Prototype Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) authority to access new cyberspace capabilities that build upon, re-use and augment existing cyber technologies and foster increased weapons systems maturity and awareness in the Army Cyber domain.

The Industry Day will highlight Army requirements, expected funding profiles, and the framework of a follow-on Cyber Innovation Challenge, which will focus on addressing specific DCO requirements through the OTA process. 

The Industry Day is an opportunity for interested members of industry and academia to meet and discuss Cyber Challenge details with key Army stakeholders including Army Cyber, TRADOC Cyber Center of Excellence (CoE), ASAALT Program Executive Offices (PEOs).

Cyberspace Operations Technology Objectives

Innovative technologies, processes, methods, facilities and capabilities are being sought to identify, develop, test, provide access to, and improve technologies resident in universities, private and federal labs, incubators and industry that are focused on Army Cyberspace requirements (offensive, defensive, and DoDIN) related to weapons and weapons-systems.

At all levels, the Army seeks to build, operate, and secure defensible networks, defending them against specific threats to achieve mission assurance, while denying the adversary freedom of action in the cyberspace domain.

Offensive Cyberspace Operations Objectives - Technologies supporting operations to project power by the application of force against enemies and adversaries in and through cyberspace for: 

• Cyber situational awareness and integration with offensive operations.
• delivery of denial effects in cyberspace.
• planning and management of integrated cyberspace and electronic warfare tools.

Defensive Cyberspace Operations Objectives - Technologies supporting operations conducted to defend DOD or other friendly cyberspace and preserve the ability to utilize friendly cyberspace capabilities that: 

• gain and maintain situational awareness through the visualization of key cyber terrain and an understanding of the actions occurring within.
• actively predict and hunt (search and discover) for advanced internal cyber threats and vulnerabilities that do not trigger or generate warnings using routine detection measures.
• allow friendly cyber forces to outmaneuver adversaries by performing preapproved, automated, agile, internal countermeasures that stop or mitigate cyber attacks; and when authorized, conduct  response actions external to friendly networks in order to create effects that deny the adversary use of offensive cyber capabilities. 
• conduct DCO mission planning and protection that identifies and assures the availability of key cyber terrain and critical infrastructure to the Army, DoD, host nation, and civil authorities that support Army missions.
• protect networks, information technology platforms, and data by controlling inbound/outbound traffic, dynamically managing locations of critical services, and hardening information systems. 
  conduct mission assurance actions that dynamically re-establish, re-secure, re-route, reconstitute, or isolate degraded or compromised networks. 
• conduct site exploitation and forensic analysis and determine technical and operational impacts of intrusions. 
• evaluate the defensive posture of networks and information systems using vulnerability assessment methods and threat emulation in order to recommend or direct changes to ensure operational readiness.

DoDIN Operations Objectives - Technologies supporting operations to design, build, configure, secure, operate, maintain, and sustain networks that: 

• build (plan, engineer, install) secure, resilient, and defensible networks.
• supports global, secure, adaptive, and rapid access across trusted and authenticated domains to authorized entities.
• allow for the secure operation of networks. (i.e. automated scanning and remediation of vulnerabilities)
• support the integration with mission partners during garrison and deployed operations.
• support the discovery, delivery, and storage of data to provide awareness and access to information in a timely and efficient manner.