Los Alamos enters market with worm defense

Los Alamos National Laboratory is entering the cybersecurity market through commercialization of a homegrown software called Network Automated Response and Quarantine (NARQ), which targets worms and other self-replicating intrusion threats.

Los Alamos developed NARQ after it failed to find a ready-made commercial product to help stymie the specific threat it faced from worms. Unlike viruses, worms don't directly infect programs and files. Instead they make copies of themselves and then propagate via the network to other machines, bringing the network down through denial of service.

NARQ detects such worms and then instantly quarantines all the affected machines and devices on the network at the port level.

The software also provides for network planning and optimization to take account of this isolation of affected systems.

The NARQ technology on the market includes the software source code, access to the inventors and rights to a patent-pending research and mapping algorithm.

NARQ commercialization, which the laboratory's Technology Transfer Division is handling, can be accomplished through development of a new stand-alone product or as a set of features for an existing product, said Jeffrey Stewart, business development executive at Los Alamos.