Cyber Component Assurance Technologies: CyberCATS

A key piece of the USAF’s drive for the “Digital Trinity” of agile software development, open architecture, and digital engineering focuses on the ability to rapidly create new (or leverage existing) software and integrate it into a system while ensuring the security of the whole system. Systems will be made up of a set of trusted, less trusted, and untrusted software components. The USAF is rightfully concerned about the potentially malicious characteristics of the less and untrusted components but cannot always invest the time required to fully test each new unverified component capability. Instead, the USAF needs a way to understand the malicious characterizations of the unverified components so that they and their interfaces with the system can be managed and risks within the system can be appropriately mitigated or countered. Tangram will develop methods for describing behaviors between trusted and unverified components, including their interfaces, and their anticipated interactions and will develop assurance tooling and techniques for creating responses enabling a more secure system.