DASA seeks novel technical solutions to provide information assurance

Homeland October 21, 2021

The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) is seeking novel technical solutions to provide information assurance within the military operating environment.

To help secure data and provide information advantage to UK Defence, DASA has launched a new Innovation Focus Area (IFA): Military Systems Information Assurance (MSIA).

This Innovation Focus Area aims to identify, develop and accelerate novel technical solutions for Information Assurance, as an alternative to cryptology, which is the traditional solution for information assurance or novel uses of existing cryptographic techniques.

Funding for this IFA will be split by Technical Readiness Level. Less mature, lower TRL (2 – 4) proposals will be considered an Emerging Innovation while more developed, higher TRL (4 – 6) proposals will be considered a Rapid Impact:

Lower TRL, emerging innovation proposals should bid for funding up to £150K to provide a proof of concept within a 6 month contract.
Higher TRL, rapid impact proposals should bid for funding up to £350K to provide a concept demonstrator within a 12 month contract.

Military Systems Information Assurance (MSIA) is a project element within the Cyber Defence Enhancement through Life Project, funded as part of the UK Government’s Integrated Review of security, defence, development and foreign policy (IR).

The Defence Enterprise is expansive, comprising many Operational Technologies which are legacy. This presents a large and varied cyber-attack surface, increasing the increasing cyber threat to UK.

The Military Systems Information Assurance (MSIA) IFA seeks alternative technologies and approaches that may not use cryptography or novel uses of existing cryptographic techniques. Proposals will need to account for the unique and hostile demands placed on information systems functioning under the challenging conditions of military operations. Examples include:

innovative ways to provide assured information flow across both enterprise level architecture network and low bandwidth, intermittent comms channels
innovative ways of securing data at rest
innovative methods for authentication
securing information in a Cloud environment, i.e. to secure data at rest and whilst being processed; this will focus on end user/system implementation as opposed to relying on the underlying cloud infrastructure
novel key management solutions

If you have an in-depth understanding of emerging capabilities, technologies, initiatives and novel approaches that may help prevent bolster the UK’s ability to secure data, DASA want to hear from you.

The closing date for proposals of this IFA is 05 January 2022 at midday BST. A second cycle will run from 05 January 2022 to 02 March 2022.