Stellarpeak Corp.: The Next Frontier Of Integrated Cyber Solutions

The digital age and the technologies that shape and propel it have empowered individuals. With that empowerment this new frontier has enabled a greater impetus for the expansion of individual liberty and commerce. While the accessible and open nature of cyberspace allows individuals to tap into a wealth of knowledge and information, it has also evolved a new landscape of opportunities for individuals and groups to exploit innovation and unleash malicious code against our vital national assets. This, in turn, has necessitated governmental action, which comes with economic costs and challenges for the boundaries of liberty. While governments have no monopoly on the means of access to cyberspace, they have a duty to provide cybersecurity as citizens’ expectations include access to transactions, services and socialization free from cyber attacks. There is an escalating need among government enterprises to have the ability to respond to threat scenarios immediately—not just addressing the technical aspects, but also the systemic and organizational behavioral risks; to meet this threat, agents of change are needed as these threats are dynamic, asymmetrical and continually changing. In the trenches stands StellarPeak Corp. delivering solutions as that agent of change. The firm assists government institutions with the tough balancing act of maintaining our national standards for liberty while ensuring our national security.

With an unimpeachable history of providing a range of services, solutions, and capabilities critical to national security, the firm helps government institutions to keep pace with modernization and the rapid growth of technology. Delivering solutions that navigate the changing threat landscape has helped it become a trusted partner of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the United States Intelligence Community (IC). “Legacy systems pose security risks and need to be secured while we simultaneously chart a roadmap for mitigating threats and achieving security in collaborative ways. This requires enterprises to follow certain policies, which is oftentimes, a slow process,” says Nuhad Karaki, the president and CEO of StellarPeak. “Consequently, resolving the conflict that exists between procedural approaches to ensure compliance, from an administrative and regulatory standpoint, is a challenge.” Through its significant experience in government and private sector business management and development projects, StellarPeak creates business processes that resolve the dilemma between the implementation of policy and the legal procedures that need to be followed.

The Naturally Trusted Partner

By assisting the Network Security Deployment (NSD) Division on the DHS Systems Engineering & Integration (SE&I) Support contract in two primary areas—information assurance engineering and requirements engineering— StellarPeak contributes effective and efficient systems engineering and integration services to continually evolve the National Cybersecurity Protection System (NCPS).

We leverage cybersecurity solutions that eliminate threats proactively and address the systemic and behavioral risks that expose sensitive data

To ensure robust cybersecurity, StellarPeak realizes the need to have an in-depth understanding of a client’s mission objectives and to mitigate risks while supporting innovation, which makes the firm, a ‘naturally trusted partner.’ StellarPeak provides technical analyses of the infrastructure, networks, data, and compliance frameworks for assessing and mitigating security risks by employing the best strategies and proven tools. “We leverage cybersecurity solutions, which eliminate threats proactively and address the systemic and behavioral risks that expose sensitive data,” says Karaki. Moreover, StellarPeak utilizes innovative practices that assist organizations with mitigating security risks through every stage of their solutions’ delivery lifecycle through a SecDevOps approach. This allows the implementation of agile and security-based practices during the software development lifecycle. StellarPeak has top industry subject matter experts in information assurance, ISO standards, cryptography, application components, and cloud solutions. “We provide the intellectual basis for implementing procedures that mitigate risks and exposure to data intrusion during the solution delivery process,” remarks Kwasi Speede, VP of StellarPeak. “Along with maintaining accreditation artifacts and conducting assessments of system safeguards, we conduct research and validate NIST 800-53Rev4 control responses.”

StellarPeak is also a solutions provider for the U.S. Government’s efforts to develop, manage, and migrate solutions to Amazon’s C2S/AWS cloud infrastructure. StellarPeak’s solutions include automation for the build and management of AWS infrastructure and their experts ensure compliance with DHS TIC, FIPS Pub 199, NIST 800-53, 800-171, FISMA, DoD SRG, and ICS 500-27. StellarPeak augments its solutions with Amazon’s public sector accelerators and third-party tools.

End-to-End Security Implementation Approach

Across StellarPeak’s notable engagements with DHS, there is one in particular that demonstrates the full range of the company’s technical and analytical services. The Office of Cybersecurity and Communications, a sub-component of the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) required support in the identification of security risks and development of a body of resolutions that mitigated those risks from testing, management, and enterprise architecture standpoints. “We applied our specialized capability framework for developing system design requirements and enhanced the system lifecycle with security-related protocols,” states Karaki.

They provided systems engineering, integrated cybersolutions, cloud engineering, data analysis, and training support services for highly classified environments. Additionally, StellarPeak provided information assurance to identify and help resolve problems, while conducting a thorough review of pre-existing system designs which culminated in recommendations for changes that enhanced the mitigation of security risks.

StellarPeak’s end-to-end approach to security implementation has helped establish a solutions baseline that defined a roadmap to more securely deploy systems, and ultimately elaborated the path to achieve security for the entire .gov domain.

Augmenting Accomplishments of Securing the Enterprise

Having delivered integrated cyber and security solutions for the IC and DHS, the company is actively growing its footprint to extend its systems engineering and integration solutions into commerce and healthcare agency missions. “We’re putting an even greater emphasis on growing teams of cybersecurity experts with subject matter capabilities to meet the expansive challenges of securing the Federal Civilian enterprise,” adds Speede. To that end, the leadership at the firm is creating an agency for transformation in all mission areas that can be supported at the individual and team level. “Our principles and values are embodied in our commitment to well-defined ethics and systems of governance organizationally,” states Karaki. “At StellarPeak, unique individual talents that are very difficult to acquire in the industry are identified and valued. StellarPeak attracts this talent by endowing an organizational culture, in which they can thrive, grow, and be recognized as part of a very important vision that values the work-and-life balance and the rewards of being challenged to do your best every day.”

Furthermore, StellarPeak is focusing on active cyberdefense, automating the processes to realize authority to operate in a way that lowers the cost of compliance, such that security becomes inherent. “We intend to create a new paradigm for injecting increasing automation into the solutions delivery process to better augment the security of enterprises,” states Karaki. StellarPeak is investing in talent that is driving the emerging Blockchain technology to remain capable of supporting the next frontier of security solutions. The company is working on Blockchain solutions that eliminate single points of failure associated with data, identity, and security certification processes to enhance enterprise protection postures. “We endeavor to remain ahead of bad actors and the smartest of adversaries to ensure we are in step with national priorities,” says Karaki.

StellarPeak is also at the forefront of embracing open source solutions—which are moving rapidly to provide a revolutionary breakthroughs for computing capabilities—to amplify its solutions differentiators. “We aim to help our customers by considering how they can remain in front of evolving threats from a security standpoint while preserving the civil liberties that define our society; this is an important aspect of the various missions we serve which underpins who we are as Americans,” states Speede. “At the same time, we are continually probing government bodies to ensure we are part of the discussion that brings clarity about keeping both our enterprises and our people secure.”