The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) has unveiled a pioneering program named Reimagining Security with Cyberpsychology-Informed Network Defenses (ReSCIND), signaling a significant shift in addressing cybersecurity challenges. For the first time, the focus is on the psychology of cyber attackers, aiming to exploit their human limitations, including decision-making biases and cognitive vulnerabilities. Traditional cybersecurity practices will be combined with the emerging field of cyberpsychology to engineer a unique technology that makes attackers’ tasks more challenging.
ReSCIND’s goal is to disrupt attacks by leveraging the innate cognitive weaknesses of attackers, penalizing them with the costs of wasted time and effort. This approach, led by Dr. Kimberly Ferguson-Walter, the program manager, is expected to delay and potentially thwart attacks, while also rapidly exposing the identities behind them. The program has awarded research contracts to teams from Charles River Analytics, GrammaTech, Peraton Labs, Raytheon Technologies Research Center, and SRI International. Test and evaluation work will be carried out by esteemed institutions like the University of Maryland Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and MITRE. The ReSCIND program is set to run for nearly four years, demonstrating IARPA’s commitment to investing in innovative research programs to address the complex challenges in the Intelligence Community.
