TECHNICAL DIVISIONS
Cyber Security and Information Sciences – Division 5
Lincoln Laboratory conducts research, development, evaluation, and deployment of prototype components and systems designed to improve the security of computer networks, hosts, and applications. A particular focus is the intersection between the Laboratory's traditional mission areas and the cyber domain. Efforts include cyber analysis; creation and demonstration of robust architectures that can operate through cyber attacks; development of prototypes that demonstrate the practicality and value of new techniques for cryptography, cyber sensing, automated threat analysis, anti-tamper systems, and malicious code detection; demonstrations of the impact of cyber on traditional kinetic systems; quantitative, repeatable evaluation of these prototypes; and, where appropriate, deployment of prototype technology to national-level exercises and operations. The Laboratory develops and deploys control and traffic-generation software for many of the Department of Defense's (DoD) largest cyber ranges.
| Groups |
Group 51—Cyber Systems and Operations
The Cyber Systems and Operations Group focuses on enabling full-scope Department of Defense (DoD), intelligence community (IC), and civilian government operations within the cyber domain and across traditional mission domains and sensing layers. The focus is on research and development (R&D) of systems providing situational awareness (SA) and command and control (C2) in the cyber domain. Key research themes involve sense-making, decision support, knowledge representation, visualization, and automated planning. Development thrusts include novel sensors, actuators, human-machine interfaces, and cloud-based, information-sharing architectures. These capabilities are integrated into secure, resilient, cost-effective information-sharing architectures in support of effective mission operations. Group strengths include software development, significant test bed infrastructure, and connections to challenges, people, systems, and data from multiple operational communities. Additionally, the group has access to a number of government systems for integration, deployment, and evaluation of the performance and effectiveness of mission operations. Overall, the group seeks to leap ahead of evolving cyber threats and enable comprehensive and secure use of the cyber domain for military and intelligence missions.
Group 52—Human Language Technology
The Human Language Technology Group is engaged in a wide range of information processing projects focused on speech and language processing, text processing, and biometrics. The speech and language processing R&D efforts include speech recognition, speaker recognition (identification, verification, and authentication), language and dialect identification, word spotting, speech coding, speech and audio signal enhancement, and machine translation. The group is initiating new R&D in advanced analytics for analyzing social networks based on speech, text, video, and network communications and activities. In each of the group's R&D areas, emphasis is placed on realistic data and experimental evaluation of techniques.
Group 53—Computing and Analytics
The Computing and Analytics Group develops advanced hardware, software, and algorithm technologies for processing large, high-dimensional datasets from a wide range of data sources (structured and unstructured). The group develops novel computer architectures; high-performance and cloud computing technologies; and novel analytics for handling high-dimensional datasets, specifically graph analytics and techniques for fusing and analyzing data from multiple data sources. Technologies are transitioned to a wide range of applications through programs within the group and through collaborative efforts across the Laboratory. The group maintains multiple academic collaborations and engages in community development activities through publications, symposia, and special sessions at top-tier conferences. The staff members have advanced degrees in computer science, mathematics, and electrical engineering, with expertise spanning high-performance and cloud computing, instruction-set architectures, distributed high-performance databases, runtime code analysis, high-level languages, graph algorithms, machine learning, image processing, anomaly detection, and statistics.
Group 58—Cyber Systems and Technology
The U.S. government faces serious threats from sophisticated cyber adversaries who seek to access, compromise, and disrupt missions and their supporting systems. The Cyber Systems and Technology Group strives to improve the security of these government systems through the development and deployment of innovative cyber security solutions that rely on the application of sound scientific and engineering principles and methodologies. The group develops threat models, measures, and metrics for security, and builds and standardizes resilient systems. Researchers design cyber sensors and analytics; develop cryptographic solutions for data at rest, in transit, and in use; and build scalable cyber decision support tools. In each of the group’s R&D areas, emphasis is placed on realistic data and rigorous experimental evaluation of techniques. Projects are carried out by small, focused, cooperative teams that succeed together by participating in all phases of technical solution development, including problem analysis, innovative solution design, system architecture, solution prototyping, and field-testing.
Members of the Cyber Systems and Technology Group are creative, motivated self-starters who share a common passion for helping to solve critical national cyber security problems. The group includes computer scientists, software and hardware engineers, mathematicians, machine-learning researchers and practitioners, cryptographers, system analysts, and security architects who firmly believe in making a difference in the security of the nation.
Group 59—Cyber System Assessments
The Cyber System Assessments Group provides the U.S. government with independent assessments of cyber systems and capabilities. These assessments are accomplished through the research and development of unique, cutting-edge technical capabilities for understanding, testing, assessing, and analyzing cyber technologies. In addition to the principal mission of planning, constructing, supporting, and executing testing and evaluation activities of cyber capabilities, the group also focuses on red-teaming to identify weaknesses in U.S. systems and characterization of adversary capabilities. The group achieves success through excellence and experience in core technical competencies, including the planning and execution of cyber evaluations, development of realistic, high-fidelity test environments to model the Internet and networks of interest, modeling of adversary capabilities, development of threat surrogates, low-level systems analysis for vulnerability discovery and malicious software analysis, low-observable system instrumentation and forensic analysis, and reverse engineering.
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