Huntsville Company on Executive Mission
June 15, 2009
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WAAYTV - Channel 31 Global Story
Cyber security is something we're learning more and more about
each day. It's becoming is so broad, and so critical, that it can be
dangerous if not protected.
Now, one local company tapped by the Obama administration is working
to keep you safe while surfing the web, Sentar, Inc.
Peter Kiss, CEO and founder of Huntsville based Sentar started this
company 19 years ago with just three employees. Now he has 40. They
provide the government and the military with technology and software
solutions. Just recently, Sentar was was just one of a few
companies tapped by the Obama administration for input on cyber
security.
Peter Kiss: "This is shaping the policy of the administration for
cyber security this is where their going." Cyber security is one of
President Barack Obama's top priorities and Kiss and his employees
say with us living in such a network centric society-it's crucial to
have a system in place to protect vital information that is in the
cyber world...which they call the new wild west.
Deborah Williams, the program manager for Sentar has been working
with presidential level committees on the national cyber security
policy. Deborah Williams: "Cyber security is going to dominate many
years to come and we're in the position to make Huntsville be a part
of that." Williams will be in Washington, D.C., Wednesday for more
Presidential level committee meetings.
Reporter: Haley Baker
Posted at:
http://www.waaytv.com/Global/story.asp?s=10537814
Sentar
Expands in CRP Facility, Expects Growth to Continue
June 5, 2009
Huntsville Chamber of Commerce, Economic Development Highlights
Sentar, which supplies technology solutions, software solutions, and
information assurance solutions for both commercial and government
clients, recently cut the ribbon on its new
facility in Cummings Research Park.
The new facility provides more than 10,500 square feet of research
and development factilities, multiple conference rooms, a
state-of-the-art computer network defense lab and offices with room
for expansion. Sentar currently employs 40 people and expects
to add 10 more jobs by the end of the year.
Sentar's latest business venture is cyber security. Its work
in this field rely helped the company win a contract from Sparta
Inc. to support development of the National Cyber Range for the
Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (Darpa).
Read the full article on AL.com:
"Sentar Opens CRP Facility, Expects Growth to Continue"
Sentar
Named One of Two STARS-IO Primes
May 9, 2009
Huntsville Times Article
Huntsville-based
Sentar has been named one of the two prime contractors for the
STARS-
IO contract, which has a potential value of $24 million.
Sentar will provide security-related
analysis, test, evaluation and
assessment support and program support for Department of
Defense
programs across information assurance, information operations and
computer
network defense activities.
The Sentar team for the
STARS-IO contract includes Booz Allen Hamilton, DAI, Miltec and
Northrop Grumman.
Sentar on Team for National Cyber Range
February 10, 2009
Huntsville Times Article
Huntsville-based Sentar Inc. has been awarded a contract
from Sparta Inc. to support
development of the National Cyber Range for the Defense Advanced Research
Projects
Agency (DARPA).
The cyber range program is part of the Comprehensive
National Cybersecurity Initiative, a
major government-wide effort to increase the nation's defenses against
electronic attack.
"This allows us to participate in a high-visibility
program on a national level," said Peter
Kiss, Sentar's founder and CEO. "We're on a great team with
industry and academia,
which increases our exposure especially in the whole cyber security
world. It really is a
big deal for us."
The company has about 40 employees, and at least 10
more people are expected to be
hired this year.
DARPA has been assigned to create the National Cyber
Range, a test bed consisting of
computers and computer systems on which cyber scenarios may be
evaluated to assess
the security of information and automated control systems.
Sparta will lead a team of commercial, defense and
academic organizations to provide
ways to protect U.S. cyber resources through in-depth analysis,
test and evaluation within
the National Cyber Range.
Article in Huntsville Times
here.
Sentar Moves to Research Park Facility
January 1, 2009
 HUNTSVILLE -
Sentar's new location at 315 Wynn Drive in Research Park provides
over 10,500 square feet of research and development
facilities. Multiple conference rooms, a state-of-the-art
computer network defense lab and offices with room to grow round out
the spacious new features of Sentar's
completely renovated facility. Sentar's open house and ribbon cutting
ceremony held on
February 6th featured Huntsville mayor Tommy Battle as guest
speaker and was attended
by other prominent officials and guests.
Go here
for Sentar directions and a map. Larger building photo
here.
Sentar's SCAND wins MDA Phase II
December 11, 2008
HUNTSVILLE - Sentar's SCAND has been awarded a
Missile Defense Agency (MDA) SBIR
Phase II transition contract to develop technologies for
detecting malicious programming
in software code.
The problem being addressed is the inability
to quickly assess new and existing software
binary and source code for the existence of malicious code
segments. Reuse and
integration of software components has become routine,
promoting rapid deployment
and cost-effectiveness in Ballistic Missile Defense Systems (BMDS)
software
development. The "scand" MDA SBIR Phase II Transition project
will be developing a
distributed software framework for selecting, executing, and
managing analysis tools.
Collections of software malcode analysis tools will be
directed from a central workstation
and report their results back. Suspicious and malicious code
segments will be identified
for mitigation.
The new software framework is based on prior
MDA SBIR projects and is related to the
Sentar accrediScan(TM) product. These tools manage the
automated scanning of
systems for security configurations settings and Defense
Information Security Agency
(DISA) Security Information Technology Guideline (STIG)
compliance, respectively. The
scand Transition project began in mid-January and concludes
within one year.
Sentar
Develops Information Assurance Risk Assessment for Military Systems
May 19, 2008
HUNTSVILLE - With the publication of the Information
Assurance Risk Assessment for
Military Systems, Sentar provides a step-by-step methodology that
allows IA Analysts' to
make operational determinations of the IA Risk stemming from known
vulnerabilities.
Specifically geared toward Department of Defense IA issues, the
IARA facilitates rigorous,
operationally focused, defendable and repeatable IA risk
assessments.
Read all about Sentar's IARA development
here
Sentar Wins
SBIR Phase II for Active Resource Manager (ARM)
September 1, 2007
HUNTSVILLE - As
computer network systems used by military, government, and business
organizations become more vital to the organizational mission, they
also grow larger,
faster, more complex, more heterogeneous, and more difficult to
protect. Nowhere is the
nation’s reliance on network systems more critical than in
network-centric warfare
(NCW). Successful conduct of NCW requires information sharing
across a span of
information domains and networks. Among the many challenges to
successful NCW is the
requirement for the networks to be robust and secure. Necessary to
securing these
networks is the provision of a technology for active network
management.
Active Resource
Manager (ARM), now in Phase II development will provide intelligent
monitoring and control for military network systems, enabling
network security personnel
to respond rapidly and effectively to cyber threats.
More about Active
Resource Manager
here
AccrediScan enables easy auditing of
DIACAP STIG compliance
July 2007
HUNTSVILLE - SMDC
Show - VBCC - Sentar's AccrediScan
is toolkit targeted to the
Information Assurance professional for enabling easier auditing of
DISA STIG compliance.
It automatically executes and records the results of over 400
automatable Security
Readiness Review scripts from DISA – reducing a tedious, manual,
time-consuming
activity down to a matter of minutes with a single click of a
button. More info
here
Sentar Wins Information Assurance
Run-time Auditing (IARA) Phase I STTR
June 13, 2006
HUNTSVILLE - The U.S. Air Force has awarded a $99,889 contract to
Sentar Inc.,
Huntsville, for
Information
Assurance Run-time Auditing (IARA).
The contract was
awarded by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) through the
Air Force Office of
Scientific Research (AFOSR). Sentar, teamed with Dr. Rose Gamble
at the
University of
Tulsa, developed this
concept as a
framework to promote the specification of software
system monitoring, audit, analysis and threat mitigation
capabilities in large scale
software intensive systems. This effort will provide the OSD with
an innovative platform to
enable the rapid development of capabilities to monitor untrusted,
executing software
components within a trusted system and capabilities to capture and
analyze monitored
behaviors. Though such practices are gaining momentum at a host
level, approaches that
can scale to enterprise and system of systems are currently
unaddressed. Thus, the IARA
effort proposes to fill this gap by proving the efficacy of scaling
run-time monitoring and
analysis technologies as well as providing a foundation to design,
configure, and deploy
those capabilities. IARA will be particularly beneficial for
dynamic and evolving
infrastructures such as Future Combat Systems, FORCEnet, Joint
Battlespace Infosphere,
or the burgeoning Global Information Grid. Broad based benefits of
the proposed
capability transcend government needs, supplying commercial
organizations a solution
and tools who seek to verify the operations of untrusted components
to be incorporated
or updated in their enterprise systems. This protection is
applicable to a number of large,
international corporations that depend on access to a growing
number of networked
systems and data stores in order to remain competitive. IARA
provides protection of
critical enterprise corporate assets at all levels of the
corporation at all sites worldwide.
Sentar Wins Digital Microscope (DM)
Phase I
March 2, 2006
HUNTSVILLE - The U.S. Air
Force has awarded a $99,879 contract to Sentar Inc.,
Huntsville, for Digital Microscope. The contract was awarded
by the Air Force Research
Laboratory, Rome, N.Y. Sentar,
teamed with SYColeman and Reifer Consultants,
developed a concept to address the critical issues of software defects and
vulnerabilities
in Code, be it C, C__, Java, or Visual Basic., called the Digital Microscope (DM)
under a
Phase I SBIR with U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command.
The DM simulates a
native running environment in which a binary code can be encapsulated, analyzed,
and
tested for malefactor influence, as well as poor coding practices. The design
of the DM
will allow, for example, the testing of code through injection of timing
mismatches,
embedded codes, and buffer overflow attempts into the binary, all in a
quarantined
environment. It will also promote plug-and-play extensibility through the use of a
multi-
agent infrastructure for future enhancements such as security wrapper
insertions, proof
generation, and attack modeling and simulation. The resulting
technology will
substantially contribute to software vulnerability discovery and
remediation by providing a
comprehensive tool for validation of code safety prior to
deployment.
Sentar Awarded COMBO Phase I
March 2,
2006
HUNTSVILLE -
Sentar,
teamed with SYColeman, wins a Phase I SBIR with
U.S. Army
Space and Missile Defense Command.
In response to the need for integrated cyber and
physical security, the Sentar team is developing an enterprise
security management
console called COMBO. COMBO will include development of a Common
Event Ontology
for cross-domain knowledge representation and definition of a
generic interface for
information exchange between Sentar’s Work-Centered Interface for
Computer Network
Defense (WCI-CND) and physical security systems, such as
SYColeman’s intelligent
surveillance solution, Praetorian. Data streams obtained from
video, proximity, motion,
and biometric devices will be correlated with cyber-attack
information to pinpoint and
document the locations and personal identities associated with
attacks and other
suspicious activities. By bringing together Sentar’s advanced
technologies for computer
network defense with SYColeman’s intelligent surveillance
solutions, COMBO provides a
full range of integrated capabilities for security situation
awareness.
A technology capable of supporting security across both physical and
computer domains
will have broad applicability throughout government and industry,
and it is particularly
appropriate to the distributed architecture of military systems
critical to the nation’s
infrastructure that are susceptible to global attack and in need of
such a capability. For
example, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems
used to manage
electrical power grids, water treatment and distribution, oil
refineries, and pipelines are
increasingly vulnerable. As all facets of industry and government
come to rely on
secured information systems, they share a common problem.
Protecting their information
assets becomes mission-critical, and the threats are pervasive.
Thus the applicability of
this technology extends to all organizations with a stake in
information systems.
Sentar Wins ARM Phase 1 for Self Managing Networks
March 20,
2006
HUNTSVILLE - In
response to the need for self-managing networks with the ability to
plan
and carry out transitions from actual to desired state of the
network within a complex,
fluid environment, Sentar, teamed with
SYColeman, developed a concept for the Active
Resource Manager (ARM) under a Phase I SBIR with U.S. Army
Space and Missile
Defense Command. The proposed
Active Resource Manager (ARM) will monitor and
integrate data from an extensible set of network management
resources, cyber-defense
sensors, and executable policies. An Event Synthesis Agent will
use fast graph
comparison algorithms for consolidation and classification of
network events. The
consolidated events will be used by ARM Reasoning Agents for
generation of Response
Specifications. These Response Specifications will be used by the
SNMP Interface Agent
to define the executable commands for altering the network state.
Agent marshalling will
provide an evolvable problem solving process by means of
intelligent selection of ARM
Reasoning Agents, whose capabilities may be nominally redundant but
whose relative
strengths and weakness may vary.
Sentar
Web Site Has a New Look
Thursday, July 27, 2005
HUNTSVILLE - Sentar revamps its corporate web site
in an effort to provide the latest
information on solutions, projects, research and technology.
This site is compatible with
Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Netscape. Send us some
feedback
and let us know
how you like it.
Sentar Wins Multi Gaming Fusion Phase I
June 29, 2005
HUNTSVILLE - Sentar wins a Phase I SBIR with AFRL for Multi Gaming
Fusion.The
proposed objective of this SBIR Phase I is to design and prototype
a extensible, reusable,
and verifiable gaming environment, which provides an advanced
command and control
(C2) simulation and experimentation platform. This system will be
capable of
incorporating numerous and variable game engines that interact
dynamically to realize
any C2 scenario introduced. Specifying a goal-driven, high-level
architecture that
embodies reconfigurable compositions of components ensures the
extensibility and
evolvability of the implemented platform. This promotes
plug-and-play incorporation of
new techniques and technologies to elucidate advanced C2 functions
without system
reprogramming. It will provide multiple modes of operation and
interaction for C2 function
experimentation. Thus, it can accommodate batch processing where a
predefined
scenario or campaign is introduced by a single user. In addition, a
single user or team of
users can be directly interacted with the environment to elucidate
the outcome of an
experimental C2 scenario.
Sentar Delivers InTime Work
Friday, July 1, 2005
HUNTSVILLE - Sentar, in conjunction with InTime, Inc (www.gointime.com),
has released
the Version 2 InTime Crop Management Web Application. The
enhancements will allow
farmers to create prescriptions for multiple fields with multiple rates in
one request, and a
new automated installation process has been added to simplify the
downloading of
requested prescriptions and scout maps.
Sentar provided
software development and test services in support of InTime's GIS-
based precision agriculture systems. Sentar’s client,
InTime, Inc.
provides crop
management services that target a reduction of input/chemical costs
through the
provision of prescription maps that enable the spatially
variable application of agricultural
chemicals to a farmer's field during the growing season.
Sentar wins PAWS Phase II
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
HUNTSVILLE - Sentar, teamed with SYColeman and Reifer Consultants,
developed a
concept for the Protection Analysis Work Stations (PAWS) under a
Phase I SBIR project.
The PAWS concept supports off-line analysis of computer network
defense (CND) systems
for the purpose of recommending improvements to their
implementation. The PAWS
analyzes a CND system in order to improve its ability to protect
both the network system
and its critical applications from malicious or accidental damage.
The purpose of PAWS is
to complement situation awareness system by providing that off-line
analysis and
recommending improvements to it. The opportunity is to begin
implementation of PAWS,
alongside the situational awareness (WCI-CND), to yield a proactive
network defense
system to guard against sophisticated cyber attacks.
Phase II PAWS efforts will demonstrate the feasibility and utility
of an agent-based
approach to collecting and analyzing information from a multitude
of sources to provide
new information and knowledge to security analysts in the support
of updating and
enhancing security plans and guidelines. The use of PAWS will
enable CND systems to
evolve with and respond to changes as well as with the threats
changes. The technology
is applicable to military systems as well as mission critical
commercial systems such as
those found in utilities and financial markets.
Sentar Awarded Position on CSC-AMCOM Express Team
Thursday, August 12, 2004
HUNTSVILLE - Sentar wins position on the CSC AMCOM
Express Team in the Business
Management Support and Process Improvement Support areas. In the
area of Business
Management Support, Sentar will provide analyses, facilitation,
expert advice and
assessment relating to business management initiatives such as
business management
initiatives and recommendations for execution.For Process
Improvement Support, Sentar
will provide analyses, facilitation, expert advice and assessment
relating to process
improvements such as reengineering recommendation, objectives, and
strategies,
issues/initative, and assess impacts.
Sentar Becomes an Employee Owned Company
November 17, 2004
HUNTSVILLE -
Sentar formally became an
employee owned company in 2004 with the
establishment of the Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP).
This plan provides
shares of stock to employees on a regular basis, allowing them to
enjoy the benefits of
ownership in the company.
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