The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) awarded Galois a $1.7 million contract to develop a technology capable of defending against sophisticated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, the company said Monday.
This contract is part of the S&T Cyber Security Division’s larger DDoS Defense (DDoSD) program.
DDoS attacks bring down websites by overwhelming them with traffic. Galois said its project, DDoS Defense for a Community of Peers (3DCop), uses peer-to-peer collaboration mechanisms for organizations to work together to detect and mitigate these attacks.
Under the contract, Galois intends to reduce DDoS threats by reducing mitigation response time by 50 percent for a peak traffic reduction of 75 to 90 percent and reducing the time between the start of an attack and its detection by 25 percent.
“Current DDoS defense systems are proving ineffective because they operate in isolation, which introduces delays in the detection, reporting, and response to a DDoS attack,” Adam Wick, research lead for mobile security and systems software at Galois, said in a statement.
“This delay is critical. It provides positive feedback to the attacker, who will continue to send more and more traffic at the target network. Our solution advances the state of DDoS defense by providing new tools that allow multiple defenders to coordinate their response, resulting in earlier detection and faster DDoS mitigation,” Wick added.
Thanks to the delay reductions, organizations would be able to detect and block DDoS attacks before they reach complete network saturation, Galois said.