Processing Your Payment

Please do not leave this page until complete. This can take a few moments.

December 28, 2009

Halo of security | ANGEL Secure Networks aims to protect government data like never before

Photo/Courtesy Angel Secure Networks Fred and Cynthia Smith stand with a Department of Defense system being programmed with its anti-tamper software called DASH
By Mindy Favreau

It sounds like the plot of the next Hollywood blockbuster: A group of anti-American terrorists steals a U.S. missile, hacks into its guidance system and threatens to launch it at Washington, D.C. It’s a scenario that so far has played out only on the silver screen, and Fred and Cynthia Smith hope to keep it that way.

For more than 10 years, the husband and wife team behind cyber-security firm ANGEL Secure Networks in Orono has been developing specialized software wanted by the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Air Force. The anti-tampering software prevents terrorists or other U.S. enemies from hacking into our weapons and networks, sabotaging them and using them against us.

The U.S. government has been working to ensure defense networks and weapons are secure for a decade, but have ramped up efforts since a 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office found standards for anti-tampering technology were still woefully inadequate. And protections are becoming more important as computers handle more military and government operations.

“Modern weapons are 80% software,” says Cynthia, the company’s president. Once a weapon is out in the world, “there is nothing the DoD can do to control it” — no master off switch, she says, in the event it falls into the wrong hands. While the DoD is mum on what protections it currently has in place, the Smiths know their type of software is in high demand. A team of government analysts who looked over the software told the Smiths that “what we have here no one else has on the right platform,” says Fred Smith, director of research and development.

The small company has grown slowly, adding two employees this year. In September, the U.S. Air Force awarded the company a $4.9 million grant to continue developing its software, and the Smiths hope another $1.6 million included in the defense appropriations bill working its way through Congress will be approved. The money will allow ANGEL to engineer its DASH software — originally developed on Linux laptops — so that it’s compatible with the operating systems on the computers in all DoD weapons systems, including planes and tanks.

It’s a niche product in the IT industry of information security, a sector that has been growing in the last few years, says Joe Kumiszcza, executive director of industry association TechMaine. Data breaches like those at Hannaford Bros. Co. in 2008 have made businesses more aware of protecting their data, and membership in the association‘s info security user group has grown to more than 100.

The U.S. government, too, has become more cautious with the growing prevalence of unmanned drones and their potential vulnerability. News hit just this month that Iraqi insurgents tapped into video feeds from U.S. spy drones, raising questions about whether adversaries could also take control of those drones.

America’s technology “is our advantage over other countries,” says Cynthia, “and there’s a great interest in stealing it, taking it apart, getting at the software and reverse-engineering it. That’s what our software is designed to prevent.”

Showing potential

The DASH software was originally devised over a decade ago by the Smiths’ son as a way to protect intellectual property on the Internet. The Smiths initially planned to pitch it as a protection for the financial industry, since Fred was a financial consultant for Boston banks. But the Smiths turned their sights to the defense industry in 2002, when the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Ohio issued a request through its Small Business Innovation Research funding program for companies that could develop anti-tampering software. They won their first of eight competitive contracts for the work in 2003.

The final product is still in development, but last year passed what the Smiths call a “red team” evaluation, where an IT expert attempted to break into it and failed. “That was very encouraging for us,” says Cynthia. The couple aims to have the product ready to install into military systems within two years, and estimate that developing the DASH software for the Air Force could create 30 jobs in the next five years.

But DASH doesn’t stop at defense. The company has also gotten funding from the Department of Energy to retool its software for the massive networks that store and transmit data for scientific experiments, like the nuclear research done by the European organization CERN. DASH software would protect the data from hacking and outside manipulation. The project is still in its early stages, and ANGEL has been using parts of the University of Maine’s old supercomputer to mimic a network of that scale to test the software.

The resources at UMaine drove the Smiths to relocate their business from Massachusetts to the Target Technology Center, the university’s tech incubator, in 2006. “It was easier to find professors to work with at UMaine than in Massachusetts,” says Cynthia, who was a lawyer in the Bay State.

Those connections helped propel ANGEL into the field of maritime security. The Smiths have been working with physics professor Charles Hess to design a better system for detecting nuclear weapons in shipping containers coming through U.S. ports. They’re also designing a shipping container with fiber optic cables that can detect tampering through their other startup, Maine Secure Composites LLC, a joint venture with Habib Dagher, director of the school’s AEWC Advanced Structures and Composites Center. While these projects are years away from implementation, the Smiths envision Maine as the industry hub, with an operation like Fairchild Semiconductor building the detectors and keeping real-time tabs on the country’s 30 million shipping containers.

While the couple admits it’s uncommon to relocate a tech firm to northeastern Maine, it was the right move for their company. “Our business doesn’t require cheap electricity or a huge work force,” Cynthia says. “We need very highly skilled software developers, and we have been able to find these people in Maine.”

In Maine, the company has better access to its congressional delegation, which has helped secure federal money, Cynthia says. Funding is a major issue for the company, since Small Business Innovation Research grants run out years before a new technology has developed enough to meet the DoD’s rigorous standards, and buying a license for the operating system the DoD uses to test the DASH software is thousands of dollars a year, says Cynthia.

The Smiths are hopeful their company’s work will bring high-tech jobs to Maine in a cutting-edge industry. They also hope their research will help attract more federal investment to the state. “The Department of Energy is the largest [venture capital] supplier in the world,” Cynthia says. “It’s there the money is.”

But in order for Maine to compete, it needs the infrastructure, the Smiths say, including a beefed-up supercomputer at the University of Maine. “Maine has fallen a little bit behind,” Fred says. “The University of Maine isn’t getting any of these large scientific projects, the state of Maine isn’t getting any of these projects. Maine has to get its act together and get projects together.”

John Koskie, operations manager of UMaine’s Advanced Computing Research Lab, which oversees the supercomputer, says the school applied for state bond money for upgrades but didn’t make the cut. “The university is looking at ways to do it, but unfortunately we’re limited in ways to fund it here,” he says.

A joint project with ANGEL to secure funding is a possibility, he says — the funding for the original UMaine supercomputer came from a 2001 project for the U.S. Army developed by the school and Applied Thermal Sciences, now in Sanford. “It’s a model of how we’ve done business before.”

Launching the right projects and getting the funding is key, say the Smiths, in making sure Maine taps into new opportunities to protect what’s too valuable to lose. While banks and other companies may slide by with insurance to cover data mishaps, the national government‘s interest in cyber-security will only grow. “If risk can be insured, then [companies] aren’t as concerned,” says Fred. “You have to go beyond what can be insured. You can’t take a policy out against a nuke or bringing down the electricity grid. You have to get to a point where the consequences are so severe that cyber-security is so important, and that’s where they’ll spend the money.”

ANGEL Secure Networks
20 Godfrey Dr., Orono
Founded: 1999
Founders: Fred and Cynthia Smith
Employees: 9 (Maine Secure Composites, a sister business, has an additional 11)
Products: Anti-tampering software used for national security and defense
Annual revenue: Under $5 million
Contact: 866-6537
www.angelsecurenetworks.com

 

 

Mindy Favreau, Mainebiz staff reporter, can be reached at mfavreau@mainebiz.biz.

 

Sign up for Enews

Most Recent

Most Recent

Comments

Order a PDF