Pentagon’s DIU soliciting tools for ‘cyber hunt’
The Defense Innovation Unit is calling on industry for solutions that can help the Pentagon go after digital threats.
A new solicitation for the Advanced Rapid Analysis of Cyber Hunt Network Infrastructure Data (ARACHNID) program was posted Monday on DIU’s website.
“The Department of Defense (DoD) requires the ability to conduct cyber hunt operations on a variety of DoD-owned and partner-owned networks in order to find, analyze, and reveal malicious cyber actors’ activities, capabilities, and infrastructure. Upon receiving a mission to hunt on a new network, the DoD needs to rapidly identify and map network devices, and seeks innovative ways to accomplish this efficiently,” per the request for proposals.
“Preferred solutions will allow for the ingestion of Layer 2 and Layer 3 network device configuration files, PCAP files, and flow logs versus taking an active scanning approach,” it stated. “Solutions should address the particular use case of a team hunting as an invited guest on a network versus managing their own enterprise cybersecurity, and should be able to price in accordance with this use case.”
Cloud resources and internet access should not be required to operate vendors’ technologies, DIU noted, adding that it prefers products that are readily available and commercially viable.
Responses to the solicitation are due Nov. 17.
The Defense Innovation Unit is headquartered in Silicon Valley and has other outposts in technology hubs around the country. It aims to better connect the Pentagon with companies in the commercial sector that have military-relevant technologies. Cyber and telecom are one of its six focus areas along with AI, autonomy, energy, human systems and space.
The new solicitation comes as the organization is moving toward a new phase that director Doug Beck refers to as “DIU 3.0,” which will aim to deepen its collaboration efforts with the military services, other Pentagon offices, and partners and allies to better scale commercial technologies for warfighters.
