Contract aims at military network anomalies

In an effort to better understand anomalies within military networks, the Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate recently awarded a six-month network security contract to PAR Government Systems Corp.

"The research will identify possible methods for establishing nonstandard communication channels among computers and formulate a generic policy for defending networked enterprises against the potential threat posed by such channels," said John Feldman, program manager in the directorate's Defensive Information Warfare Branch, in a release.

The Anomalous Channel Identification (ACID) contract, which is worth $89,995, was awarded to Rome, N.Y.-based PAR on April 24, according to an AFRL spokesperson.

"AFRL scientists, together with PAR researchers, hope to perform contained tests and experiments to learn more about the behavior of networked traffic under these conditions," Feldman said. "This work will contribute to an increased understanding of anomalous, or unexplained, channel traffic within networked computer enterprises."

Contract work, which has already begun, will primarily be performed in the directorate's Next Generation Cyber Security Laboratory, along with other cybersecurity research, he said.