Omnisense: U.S. Intelligence-Funded Startup Claims It Can Predict Cyberattacks Days Before They Happen
29 March 2019 6:56 AM GMT
Omnisense constantly monitors the web to pick up on signals pointing to a cyberattack. In one case, an attack was detected four days in advance.
- Back in 2015, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a research unit within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, issued a call for anyone who could come up with novel, efficient ways to predict cyberattacks before they happened.
- Managed from a data center, or "mothership," installed in the basement of Hyperion Gray software research scientist Jason Hopper's Nova Scotia, Canada, home, Omnisense watches over the internet all the time.
- In one case, working with an unnamed company, Hopper claimed Omnisense warned of a specific attack, targeting a server allowing remote connections into a business network, four days before hackers came knocking.
- Given the various data sets that could potentially contribute to cyberattack forecasts, IARPA is very much aware of the need to address both privacy and security concerns, and carries out its programs in close consultation with the Office of General Counsel and the Office of Civil Liberties, Privacy, and Transparency.
- There is one area where Omnisense and competing tools can't provide protection: a targeted attack where a single individual is targeted via unique methods.
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