Long gone are the days when vital defense, financial and energy systems could be protected simply by locking doors and checking nametags. As cyberspace has spread, governments and institutions have adapted accordingly, relying on vast Internet-based networks to serve as the central nervous system of the country’s most critical infrastructure.
But security threats have kept pace, ranging from viruses and denial-of-service attacks, to malware, spyware and old-fashioned system instability. Now an Idaho company thinks it has a solution to a wide range of those threats, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense is willing to support it.
Moscow, [Idaho]-based Computer Measurements Laboratory — founded a little over a year ago by computer scientist and University of Idaho professor John Munson and veteran hardware architect Rick Hoover – won a U.S. Air Force Small Business Innovation Research Phase II grant award to pursue development of its cutting edge computer security and reliability technology.
“What we’re basically going after right now is the low-hanging fruit in the security space,” Hoover said. “The idea here is to be able to detect that you’ve got a problem in your system, but it’s a very different way of going about it than any other antivirus program out there.”
The biggest difference is in the speed of response: Most antivirus software contains an updating list of virus “signatures” — identifiers that alert the software once the virus has entered the system. Based on that it isolates or deletes the infected file, but if your computer gets a virus that isn’t in the database yet, it can easily slip past the defenses. With too many viruses for a reliable count and about 200 new ones discovered every month, the need is great for quicker responses to threats. That’s where CML comes in.
Hoover likens the company’s approach to installing a series…