The prototype system will go beyond traditional security approaches of encryption, firewalls, intrusion-detection devices and anti-virus software. Not only will the flexible model be designed to look retrospectively at event occurrences and system compromises, it will be able to correlate historical traffic patterns with dynamic data from monitors, sensors and other devices capturing information about network traffic and user activity in real time. 

Streaming analytics will be a key design component of the FAA prototype system. This advanced technology will enable the FAA to continually analyze the massive amounts of data flowing through its networks in real time and get fast and accurate insights about possible threats and system compromises in time to take action. The FAA will also be able to store real-time results in a data warehouse for later analysis and supervised learning. 

In the design, customized executive-level dashboards will be used to deliver up-to-the-second information on the security posture of the FAA networks. These dashboards will give FAA officials visual representations of network workloads, tickets for found malware, and historical trends to facilitate decision making and early action in the event of network anomalies suggesting a possible attack.

"Cyber attacks have become a global pandemic and no system is immune," said Todd Ramsey, general manager, U.S. Federal, IBM. "Through this collaboration with the FAA, as well as others underway in government and the private sector, we hope to develop comprehensive solutions for protecting the digital and physical infrastructures of critical national networks and enterprise systems."