RTI Awarded $500K Additional U.S. Government Funding to Standardize DoD Cybersecurity Technology

RTI is Working with the DoD to Further Enhance the Interoperation of, and Rapid Updates to, Their Deployed Cybersecurity Infrastructure

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – May 5, 2020 – Real-Time Innovations (RTI), the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) connectivity company, today announced that it has been awarded $500K in additional government funding to continue support of their Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II contract. RTI will augment its Connext DDS commercial software product to advance the cybersecurity capabilities of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) by bridging the gap between proprietary cybersecurity solutions and standardization.

RTI was granted additional funding to focus on the provisioning of the DoD’s cybersecurity tools which will enable secure, reliable and rapid delivery of updates to their cyber infrastructure. With the previous government funding, RTI was able to successfully develop data models for multiple cyber tools and evolve those data models over time. RTI delivered common, open cyber tool data models and application control interfaces to enable plug-and-play cyber tool interoperability between providers including major cybersecurity antivirus tools and SIEMs.

Today, cybersecurity tools are tightly coupled, requiring multiple system configuration changes in order to add or remove components within a cybersecurity system. Such challenges force organizations to accept vendor lock-in and a lack of complete control over their systems, or to purchase multiple tools to work around proprietary data connections, which increases system complexity. Additional tools and services must then be purchased to allow communication and interoperability between all system components. These challenges make systems brittle, harder to maintain, and increase the total cost of operation (TCO).  The capability we are developing is intended to give control back to system owners, allowing them to select the best cyber tool software for the job and to enable disparate systems and tools to transparently coexist.

The RTI Research Team will continue its initiative by researching solutions that will dramatically reduce the cyber tool upgrade cycle by providing the ability to rapidly install, test and deploy new tool sets, configuration files, and settings within the DoD’s combat systems.  RTI will continue to work with the DoD and other industry stakeholders to pursue standardization of these cyber data models and interfaces by international standards bodies. This will encourage widespread adoption and ultimately drive down for the cost of building and maintaining combat system cybersecurity.

"With the increasing prominence of cyberattacks, the DoD needs to get away from vendor-locked cyber solutions, which create cross-system interoperability challenges and raise costs," says Paul Pazandak, Director of Advanced Research, RTI. "RTI is proud to be trusted to continue to lead this initiative to evolve and mature our vision of standardizing cybersecurity technology to drive higher levels of interoperability while lowering operational costs."

The federally funded SBIR program facilitates the financing of small-business research and development activities. The program enables the creation of concepts and inventions with significant potential to advance the development of innovative products, and their eventual transition into DoD programs. The program’s chief role is to bridge the gap between the performance of basic science and the commercialization of resulting innovations. RTI has a long and very successful history of participation in this program. We are rated in the top 1% of all companies that are awarded SBIR funding and commercialize the results.

About RTI
Real-Time Innovations (RTI) is the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) connectivity company. The RTI Connext® Databus is a software framework that shares information in real time, making applications work together as one integrated system. It connects across field, and cloud. Its reliability, security, performance, and scalability are proven in the most demanding industrial systems. Deployed systems include medical devices and imaging; wind, hydro and solar power; autonomous planes, trains, and cars; traffic control; Oil and Gas; robotics, ships, and defense.

RTI is the largest vendor of products based on the Object Management Group (OMG) Data Distribution Service™ (DDS) standard. RTI is privately held and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.

Download a free 30-day trial of the latest, fully-functional Connext DDS software today:  https://www.rti.com/downloads.