PALO ALTO, CA – September 17, 2020 – Today, Xage Security announces that they have been awarded a contract by the Air Force Research Lab, to evaluate and prepare for the delivery of end-to-end data protection across military and civilian assets to support command and control for the U.S. Space Force (USSF). Xage’s solution enables the USSF to enforce verification for any system access, efficiently protect resources even when out of contact, and ensure data can be trusted and protected from source until delivery to the operational units.
The U.S. Space Force was designed to protect space – the highest ground of any battlefield – by developing military space professionals, acquiring military space systems, maturing the military doctrine for space power, and organizing space forces. Space systems employ a variety of services, both commercial and defense, that rely on connectivity, positioning, wide area geographical sensing, and secure, precise data. As a result, they require a security solution that blocks cyber attacks before they gain traction, protects the space platform at a granular level, and ensures data integrity, confidentiality, and access across various organizations and units. Any security solution deployed must remain resilient even in the face of the most sophisticated attacks, and must be able to prevent and combat cyberattacks in real time.
The Xage Security Fabric, rooted in tamperproof blockchain technology, is well suited to handle the diverse ecosystem of space and terrestrial assets deployed with the following capabilities:
- Universal protection: The USSF deploys connected assets that operate both in space and on the ground. Xage provides a unified platform that secures all systems, no matter their age or location––enabling satellite-to-satellite secure cooperation, regardless of individual device capabilities.
- Access control: Xage’s Enforcement Point solution provides granular identity-based access control for ground systems communicating with satellites with confidential payload protection.
- Data security: Xage’s Dynamic Data Security offering can enforce fine grained access control and data control among applications, across both USSF and commercial assets, and between space and ground. By protecting data across a diverse architecture, commercial operators, and multiple parties, the USSF can create trusted situational awareness in real time, and block various dangerous spoofing or command intrusion attacks.
- No single point of hack: The Xage Fabric removes singular points of entry, ensuring that a single hack is no longer capable of wiping out all operations across a system.
- Disconnected operations: Even when ground resources are compromised or disconnected, satellites must be able to operate securely. The Xage Fabric enables autonomous operation at the edge, providing security services regardless of connectivity status.
“The USSF requires decentralized enforcement of security to establish space domain resilience and objective situational awareness––across every asset and data element,” said Xage CEO Duncan Greatwood. “We built the Xage solution to serve the needs of complex critical infrastructure systems, and are excited to bring the Xage solution to the Space Force in the form of a blockchain-protected space system security.”
This contract, funded through the AFWERX program, follows Xage’s prior December 2019 contract with the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to evaluate Xage’s blockchain-protected Security Fabric.
