Rockwell Collins selected for UAV cyber security programme

Rockwell Collins has revealed that it has been selected as the prime contractor for the unmanned air vehicle (UAV) portion of the High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems (HACMS) programme sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The company announced the news on 17 September.

The goal of the HACMS programme is to create technology for the construction of high-assurance cyber-physical systems.  These systems must be functionally correct and satisfy appropriate safety and security properties.  Achieving this goal requires a fundamentally different approach from what the software community has taken to date.  Consequently, HACMS will adopt a clean-slate, formal methods-based approach to enable semi-automated code synthesis from executable, formal specifications.

Under the four-and-half-year contract, Rockwell Collins will develop cyber security solutions for UAVs, with applicability to other network-enabled military vehicles. The company will draw on its ‘expertise in security certification of complex systems and the use of formal methods’ for the work. Formal methods are the application of rigorous mathematical reasoning and advanced analysis tools to prove relevant properties about a system.

Rockwell Collins is leading a team that includes Boeing, Galois, National ICT Australia (NICTA), and the University of Minnesota for the programme.