Plan X: DARPA's Revolutionary Cyber Security Platform
DARPA's Plan X aims to make active cyber defense more accessible to the masses through agility, training, and intuitive interfaces.
![](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt69509c9116440be8/bltb4db2d23622bfab4/64cb57475a4a0651d464ae68/PlanX-1.png?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Back on February 26, much of the Internet was burying itself in the thoroughly predictable pomp and circumstance of the FCC's live-streamed net neutrality vote. On the same day, another event -- quieter and less political -- related to the future of the Internet was live-streamed from Washington courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor.
The event, titled The Future of Cybersecurity Innovation, featured nearly two hours of talks on the best cyber security practices, both present and future. Headlining the event was the first public unveiling of Plan X -- a network security platform at least three years in the making, courtesy of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Originally announced in May 2012 (and later outlined more thoroughly in October of that year), Plan X is the first DARPA project of its kind -- developed to enable Department of Defense (DoD) cyber missions in real-time. DARPA anticipates that some form of the program will eventually be made publicly available for both businesses and consumers. DARPA has already contributed portions of it to open source projects.
During the February event, program manager Frank Pound participated in a live interview. He demonstrated the third and current prototype of Plan X (completed in October) on a large touch-screen monitor and answered audience questions on its real-world future applications. Pound reports that the fourth Plan X prototype is due this month. Those applications included actual cyber warfare deployment in a realistic scenario, as well as everyday network management in both the home and the office.
Although Plan X has been described as in its nascent stages, it is already showing tremendous promise for the future of information security, the future of cyber defense, and the future of the Internet by making cyber security more accessible. The following slides offer an overview of some of the neatest accessibility features of DARPA's Plan X as publicly outlined thus far.
These features, in turn, have stimulated our curiosity at InformationWeek, and we want to know what you think. What features of Plan X do you see potentially helping your organization's network security efforts? Can you see yourself managing an offshoot to keep track of the security of your own home network? Does the potential for network immersion that Plan X offers excite you or frighten you? Let us know your thoughts and reactions in the comments section below.
On the day of the Christian Science Monitor event, Pound showed up with his right arm in a cast.
That didn't do much to slow him down. During his demo of Plan X's GUI, Pound seamlessly demonstrated Plan X's smooth drag-and-drop, touch-based interface on a large monitor -- even marveling to himself about how easy and "great" the touch-screen interface is to use.
"Touch has become a native, intuitive interface where people are … using these things effectively," Pound told event attendees, noting that DARPA had conducted numerous usability studies to determine how to proceed with Plan X.
Traditionalist users aren't tied to the touch interface, however. Pound said they can still use a keyboard and a mouse if they prefer.
(Image source: DARPA)
Based on DARPA's user studies, Pound suggests, it can be easy for network administrators and other cyber operations professionals to miss things. This can be a real problem, as cyber defense demands IT's full attention in real time.
DARPA's answer is targeted visualization to ensure attention is paid when key risks and other events arise. Of course, every user is different. The twist, then, is that the Plan X system will automatically figure out for individual users what makes them pay attention.
"Something that catches the eye is obviously very important -- something that users will natively understand is 'Hey, I need to pay attention to this," notes Pound. "So the system will learn how the specific operator's using the system and learn what catches their eyes."
Pound refers to this as the "banner ad" model, learning about the individual user's behavior, and then employing methods that will draw their attention "to make it easier for operators to understand that a bad thing is happening."
One problem with today's cyber security, Pound laments, is that it often uses a backward-facing approach after a cyber attack has already occurred. Another problem, he adds, is that this approach requires "a crack team of forensic [analysts who have] been through years of training to understand what's suspicious."
"Cyber command needs to hire 6,200 folks to man what they call the Cyber Mission Forces [to] be involved with defending America itself in terms of our cyber defenses," reports Pound. "How are they going to do that with the current tool set that is out there? Not everybody is a computer scientist, not everybody is a developer."
Plan X's GUI, therefore, has been designed with junior military specialists and other non-experts in mind -- using touch interfaces, cutting-edge data visualization, and individualization so that "the user can begin to reason … visually without having to understand what each one of these fields is, and then run analytics that make sense."
Accordingly, the tenderfoot user is empowered to find otherwise non-obvious threats and other suspicious activity quickly and accurately, in real-time.
DARPA has also incorporated educational modules into Plan X -- allowing people of all skill levels to continue to improve their threat-detection abilities. Pound explains that operators will begin with very basic missions, "and they'll learn over time how to conduct more complex missions."
Additionally, says Pound, operators will be graded on their abilities and tasked with repeating the missions they do poorly on until they master them appropriately, which forces them to get better.
"[Plan X is] a learning tool in addition to an operational tool, and so that also addresses another need of the military to have this persistent training environment," says Pound. "So if [the education module is] built into the operational environment, it's persistent; it's always there, you're always learning; you can shift from doing an operation … to doing training …"
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