A team led by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory is working on more functionalities for an industrial control system cybersecurity prototype currently used by the U.S. Navy.
APL cybersecurity engineer Harley Parkes said in a Tuesday statement that development is focused on making the More Situational Awareness for Industrial Control Systems technology deployable in new locations without the laboratory’s help.
MOSAICS provides capabilities for detecting and characterizing cyberattacks on military systems, with the technology successfully identifying malicious activities during initial testing at Naval Facilities Southwest in California in August.
Such a performance pushed the Navy to license the technology for additional one-year use and seek funding for deployments on additional bases.
“Beyond the success of the planned testing, the incident with the contractor demonstrated the true value of MOSAICS — it can help operators determine, when they see a physical effect on their system, whether that’s due to mechanical failure or a cyberattack,” shared Parkes.
According to Ray Yuan, APL’s cyber operations mission area executive, future work on MOSAICS would involve incorporating autonomous features that would enable defense and repair operations without human intervention.
