Promia: Field-Proven Network Security Solutions

Cyberattacks are rapidly escalating across multiple sectors, including military and government. “Interestingly, the most critical exposures are not in technology per se, but in human cognition and habit behavior,” expresses John Mullen, President and CEO, Promia. For over a decade, Promia has been developing cybersecurity solutions that are proven in military deployments worldwide. “During a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. National Security Agency, we designed, built, sold, and supported the world’s first secure Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) Object Request Broker (ORB), which is still being used by banks, telecommunications groups, and other enterprises.” Subsequently, under agreements with the U.S. Navy, Promia leveraged this technology to design and build a cybersecurity monitoring and protection system for ashore and afloat platforms, Promia Raven. Today, this system has expanded to include network operations monitoring and support for security cameras with video analytics—creating a secure, scalable infrastructure for the Internet of Things (IoT).

Promia Raven systems are designed to produce actionable security intelligence in both machine-readable formats for immediate response and formats for human understanding for forensic study, trend analysis, and increased awareness. It includes a centralized command Naval Operating Center-based management operation with rugged shipboard deployments; robust enough to handle the detected attacks and policy violation incidents.

“Raven also has an extensive set of tools to remotely diagnose and resolve network operation issues such as routing loops, unauthorized applications, or compromised equipments,” explains Mullen. For instance, when Raven is integrated with BMC BladeLogic for Server Automation, it is able to remotely reinstall the appropriate OS, application suite, and relevant data on a computer that had been crippled by malware—without human intervention.

Promia is on a mission to extend the security boundaries beyond the shore infrastructure and provide ships with an intelligent security monitoring and assessment capability.

Raven has an extensive set of tools to remotely diagnose and resolve network operation issues such as routing loops, unauthorized applications, or compromised equipments

The Ravens are connected to each other by a back channel in a hierarchical grid with either “father-son-grandson…” relationship or a federated fail-over peer to peer relationship or a combination of both. Individual Ravens use their combination of analytic engines to identify threats. For example, when a ship travels from the Pacific to the Atlantic it goes from one Area of Responsibility to another, which changes security policies related to certain items associated with its mission. The Raven hierarchy can manage and adjust these settings based on the location of the ships from a centralized control of network security operations.

In addition, Promia OWL Managed Security Monitoring service combines a team of security experts and a rigorous process for incident detection and response to provide organizations real-time feedback regarding the impact of a network’s security. In one instance, a Promia customer experienced cyberattacks from outside the country and wanted to combine its network security with seamless network operations to keep the business up and running. With Promia’s OWL monitoring service, the client was able to quickly identify the issues and thwart the attack. “We reduced the daily security event count—comprised of informational warnings and external scans. Promia also demonstrated quantifiable benefits in costs, manpower, and productivity,” asserts Mullen.

Forging ahead, “We are focusing on securely monitoring the new Electromagnetic Pulse sensors to extend our infrastructure to Smart Cities, Port Security, and the IoT,” affirms Mullen. Furthermore, the CEO intends to unleash a new counter-drone capability that includes ship, shore and land based radar, acoustic, radio frequency, military cameras with computer assisted visual analytic sensors to detect and in some cases destroy adversary drones.