Leading schools competed in three categories to present solutions to ongoing Department of Defense (DoD) cyber threats and challenges.

Teams from the University of Maryland National Consortium of Terrorism and the Study of Terrorism (START), University of California San Diego, and the University of Colorado Colorado Springs were each awarded $150,000 for winning their respective categories in the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN) Cyber Innovators Challenge, held in partnership with the Department of Defense (DoD) University Consortium for Cybersecurity (UC2).

While presenting these solutions for cyber defense, the teams underscored the potential of their innovative research initiatives to significantly advance state of the art and address critical threats and challenges faced by the DoD.

The challenge enabled UC2 to connect to academia and bring the nation’s top minds to address cybersecurity challenge topics in modeling and predictive analytics, persona and influence, and data and permeability. The challenge asked participants to deliver novel partnership plans to transfer their work to DoD stakeholders, putting as much emphasis on collaboration, communication, and bridging access for science as on rewarding innovation.

Dr. Gwyneth Sutherlin, Director of UC2 shared, “We sponsored this challenge in partnership with NSIN because we believe in research through partnership, and NSIN has a strong track record of fostering partnerships between researchers and the DoD. They were the ideal fit for our mission to increase collaboration in cybersecurity research.”

For the university teams, the increased collaboration was also a boon. “We don’t often have access to “walk the halls” and hear from stakeholders what their current problems are. Often by the time [Requests for Information] RFIs or [Requests for Proposals] RFPs hit the street, it’s hard to divine what the real need is (…),” explained Dr. Timothy Clancy, Assistant Research Scientist at START. “The Cyber Innovators Challenge helped us by serving as a bridge between our work and the stakeholders we were trying to reach. UC2 and NSIN “walked the halls” for us, presenting stakeholder needs as the categories and topics of the challenge.”

Topic 1: Modeling and Predictive Analytics

The first topic covered in the Cyber Innovators Challenge focused on how modeling and predictive analytics might help analysts, operators, planners, and other decision-makers understand the effects of information and cyber activities through the lenses of technical, social, cultural, and behavioral science.

START’s first-prize solution focused on their previous modeling and simulation work with the terror contagion hypotheses, which gave the team a framework for understanding hacktivism, a type of ideologically-motivated hacking campaign. The team proposed the conversion of existing terror contagion research – including an existing modeling and simulation capability – for use in studying and countering cyber hacktivism waves.

Under topic one, the University of St. Louis won second place and $100,000 for their concept to train cyber defenders with novel, psychology-based metrics that explain the adversarial mindset. The University of Alabama-Huntsville took third place $75,000 for their large language model (LLM)-based solution to detect, classify, summarize, and compute sentiment on targeted misinformation campaigns.

Topic 2: Persona and Influence

The second topic challenged participants to understand how adversaries use masquerading techniques and online personas to avoid identification and detection. Teams were asked to leverage flaws in the development and employment of these false personas in order to recognize and attribute them.

UC-San Diego won first prize in the topic area for their idea to increase costs facing would-be hackers. Their solution, the Honeypot LLM, raises the cost by uncovering hackers’ methods, rendering them ineffective. Honeypot LLM simulates potential victims using socially engineered, conversational interactions to extract adversaries’ tactics, techniques, and procedures, enabling cybersecurity professionals to engage in proactive protection and give more accurate threat reporting and risk analysis.

Under topic two, the Clemson University Media Forensics Hub won second place and $100,000 for their analytic platform, Foreign Influence Network Detector (FIND), which identifies malign, coordinated influence operations on social media. Augusta University School of Computer and Cyber Sciences took home third and $75,000 for their concept to leverage the “liveliness” of real human eyes via corneal specular reflections to distinguish humans from AI-generated faces.

Topic 3: Data and Permeability

The final topic sought to address the tradeoff between the need to protect classified sources and methods and the need to leverage the external knowledge, data, and situational awareness of uncleared partners.

The University of Colorado Colorado Springs took the top spot for their solution, refining Multiple-Domain Range to enable multi-domain cyber operations, designing cyber wargaming scenarios and collecting data and using GenAI to generate the data at scale.

University of Maryland Global Campus took second and $100,000 for their solution to train DCO personnel using flexible and repeatable synthetic threat simulation that relies on data anonymization, and safe data exchange. The State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo captured third place and $75,000 with their solution, Fortis, which protects against manipulated and corrupted data by acting as a mediator between the transfer creator and the blockchain.

As adversaries increase the sophistication and frequency of attacks, the challenge responded to the need for greater collaboration on cybersecurity. “Cyberspace has quickly emerged as a critical domain, key to the security of our nation’s citizens and the warfighters that protect them,” shared NSIN Venture Portfolio Director and DIU Deputy Chief of Global Partnerships Abigail Desjardins. “Every university that participated provided unique ideas, insights, and research that pushed our cyber defense capabilities further to ensure we remain equipped for the challenges of today and the future.”

About the Defense Innovation Unit

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) strengthens national security by accelerating the adoption of commercial technology in the Department of Defense and bolstering our allied and national security innovation bases. DIU partners with organizations across the DoD to rapidly prototype and field dual-use capabilities that solve operational challenges at speed and scale. With offices in Silicon Valley, Boston, Austin, Chicago and Washington, DC, DIU is the Department’s gateway to leading technology companies across the country.

About National Security Innovation Network

NSIN is a program office in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), nested within the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU). We are set up to collaborate with a wide variety of innovators to include universities, researchers, students, entrepreneurs and start-ups. We create opportunities for collaboration across communities and connect those that might not traditionally work in national security. Together, we help drive national security innovation and develop technologies that directly support the individuals responsible for protecting our country.

For more information or interview requests with Team NSIN, please contact us at [email protected].