DARPA awards contracts to Raytheon BBN for power grid infrastructure cybersecurity solutions

The U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently awarded Raytheon BBN Technologies multiple contracts to research and develop technologies to detect and respond to cyber attacks on U.S. power grid infrastructure.

The company will be developing technologies to enhance situational awareness by providing early warning of an impending attack and detect adversarial spoofing of power grid data collection and communication. The technology will also maintain situational awareness in the immediate aftermath of an attack.

“During the last two decades, industrial control systems have evolved so that most are now connected to the Internet, making them vulnerable to cyber attack,” said Jason Redi, vice president for Raytheon’s BBN Technologies Networking and Communications unit. “A significant power disruption would have profound economic and human costs in the U.S, so our goals are to prevent attacks and to reduce the time required to restore power after an attack.”

Raytheon will also examine ways to maintain secure emergency communications networks in the aftermath of an attack by isolating affected organizations from the internet and establishing a secure emergency network to coordinate power restoration without depending on external networks.

Raytheon Co. specializes in defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions.