The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate’s (S&T) Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced the eighth cybersecurity technology transitioning to commercialization as part of its Cyber Security Division’s (CSD) Transition to Practice (TTP) program.
ZeroPoint is an exploit detection and analytics tool funded by the National Science Foundation and developed by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It has been spun off as a startup company called ZeroPoint Dynamics.
The technology focuses on analyzing documents, email, web content and server traffic for potentially hazardous content known as exploit payloads. With this technology, users will not need to guess whether a document is infected with malicious code and instead will be notified quickly before data is lost.
Effective and user-friendly technology is essential to protecting against data breaches and S&T is proud to prioritize new developments in this arena, said DHS under secretary for science and technology Reginald Brothers, noting that phishing and web-based attacks are all too familiar today.
Each fiscal year, the TTP program identifies promising cybersecurity technologies developed with federal funding to incorporate into the 36-month transition-to-market program. TTP introduces the technologies to cybersecurity professionals around the country with the goal of connecting them to investors, developers and integrators who can advance the technology and turn it into commercially viable products.
In the spring of 2014, the TTP program identified ZeroPoint as a candidate for transition to the commercial marketplace.
Central to the ZeroPoint approach is a patented “execution-of-data” technology that uses an advanced micro-operating system built into the analysis engine to enable fast, accurate inspections of data and memory to identify malicious code.
The ZeroPoint approach is unique because it provides fast, transparent and accurate detection to stop cyber adversaries from harming enterprise infrastructure and networks, observed CSD director Douglas Maughan.
For more information about the TTP program, visit the program’s webpage.
For more information about CSD, visit www.dhs.gov/cyber-research.