SBIR Phase I: Distributed Secure Enclave For Modern Enterprise Networks And Critical Information Systems

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to protect critical infrastructure and enterprise information systems against malicious digital adversaries at all levels. Critical information systems, such as those which facilitate essential services or maintain highly sensitive/valuable digital assets, represent significant potential targets for highly sophisticated adversaries.

Consequently, vulnerabilities in these systems present grave security threats. The proposed project will develop a new method for securing critical information systems that offers both higher protection and accessibility for less sophisticated users.

This SBIR Phase I project proposes to construct and evaluate a prototype implementing core functionality for a Distributed Secure Enclave capable of acting as a decentralized, intrusion-tolerant root of trust for zero-trust security infrastructure. By combining advancements from distributed cryptography and intrusion tolerant distributed systems within a closed/permissioned Distributed Ledger (DL) network, such a platform will have the ability to operate both as a decentralized system of record and cryptographic key escrow service.

These capabilities, once proven, could then be extended to provide critical enterprise security services such as secret storage/management, data/document encryption, certificate/key management, identity and access management (IdAM), secure communication services, and many others in a manner that is provably secure—including in the presence of sophisticated adversaries. By constructing and formally evaluating a functional prototype of this technology, this proposed project aims not only to prove the technical efficacy of this particular security solution, but also to demonstrate a novel paradigm for applying DL technologies for practical applications within the enterprise.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.