VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA—Canada’s Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces (DND/CAF) this week awarded cybersecurity company Plurilock a contract to advance the state of the art in real-time cyberattack detection.
The project, funded through the Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS) program, is designed to enhance DND/CAF’s ability to combat advanced persistent threats (APTs) in government cyber-systems, and will enable Plurilock to further develop its industry-leading behavioral biometrics technology.
Plurilock’s behavioral biometrics engine, which lies at the heart of its ADAPT and DEFEND authentication products, uses machine learning to recognize users based on bodily movement, without relying on passwords, fingerprints, or other easily forged forms of digital identity.
Plurilock products leverage this capability to detect both unauthorized human users and automated attacks, and are able to protect systems on a continuous basis, without interrupting system activity or work.
Plurilock was selected under the IDEaS second Competitive Projects call for proposals for new tools to improve both the detection of malicious cyber-attacks and the efficiency, speed, and accuracy of agency responses to them. The project is part of a broader search for innovations that will enable Canada to optimize its cybersecurity and cyber-response profiles.
“It’s hard to overstate the need for real-time threat detection and response in today’s critical systems,” says Plurilock CEO Ian Paterson. “Plurilock radically enables this capability and we’re excited to be able to demonstrate our leadership by working with the Department of National Defence on this project.”
As the latest in a multi-year series of contracts with United States and Canadian national defense agencies, the project will commence immediately and run through late 2019, with further stages to follow once DND/CAF confirms the collaboration to be successful.
About Plurilock
Plurilock is the leader in advanced and continuous authentication for standards and regulatory compliance. Plurilock’s software leverages state-of-the-art behavioral-biometric, environmental, and contextual technologies to provide invisible, adaptive, and risk-based MFA solutions with the lowest possible cost and complexity. Plurilock enables organizations to compute safely—and with peace of mind.
About IDEaS
The Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS) program fosters open innovation to provide creative thinkers with the structure and support to encourage solutions which will assist in solving some of Canada’s toughest defense and security challenges. The IDEaS program is broken into several components, designed to advance defense technologies in Canada. Innovations are eligible for funding up to $200,000 during Component 1a and up to $1,000,000 during Component 1b. Innovations that are promising for Canada can receive non-IDEaS Program funding up to $20M to continue development up to Solution Readiness Level 9.
