Newswise — Washington, D.C.—The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) today announced a $749,928 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award to Manassas, Virginia-based Progeny Systems Corporation for developing a secure, mobile application development environment and deployment process.
“Enhancing the security of the mobile application development and deployment process is an essential component to securing the overall mobile environment,” said S&T’s Cyber Security Division Director Douglas Maughan. “This project will help ensure the apps loaded on our cell phones are free of vulnerable code and therefore safe to use.”
Progeny is teaming with Xamarin, Inc., a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary, to build a development framework that will create highly secure mobile applications for iOS, Windows and Android platforms for enterprise organizations. The newly developed framework will comply with mobile security standards and best practices such as the National Information Assurance Partnership Protection Profile and Open Web Application Software Project Top 10. The project scope encompasses building sample mobile applications and documentation, which are required to establish a secure mobile application development and deployment process that is consistent, streamlined, repeatable and scalable across enterprise systems. The framework will ensure a user experience that is completely native to the mobile device, while providing developers greater opportunities for code-sharing and reuse and a standardized model for mobile application development and testing.
The award was made through the SBIR Other Agencies Technology Solutions (OATS) program and the project is being managed by the S&T Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Cyber Security Division (CSD).
“Creating development environments that incorporate security into mobile apps transparently while having the flexibility to verify either compliance against security requirements or adherence to development standards is a core component needed to secure the mobile ecosystem,” said Vincent Sritapan, S&T Mobile Security R&D Program Manager.
This project will create a capability that will increase development speed, efficiency and scalability. It also will lower development costs and improve the quality and security of mobile apps developed using the framework.
“Awards such as this one show how small companies are essential to addressing DHS technology needs.” said John Pucci, director of the DHS S&T SBIR program.
Initiated in 2004, the DHS S&T SBIR Program is a competitive contract awards program to increase the participation of innovative and creative U.S. small businesses in federal research and development initiatives and to increase private-sector commercialization of SBIR-funded solutions. CSD leverages the SBIR Program to fund small-business development of new and enhanced cybersecurity solutions. For more about the S&T SBIR Program, visit https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/sbir.
CSD’s mission is to enhance the security and resilience of the nation’s critical information infrastructure and the internet by developing and delivering new technologies, tools and techniques to defend against cyberattacks. CSD conducts and supports technology transitions and leads and coordinates R&D among DHS customers, government agencies, the private sector and international partners. For more information about CSD, visit https://www.dhs.gov/cyber-research.
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