DoD awards FoxGuard an ESTCP grant for military base cybersecurity

FoxGuard Solutions was awarded the Department of Defense and Department of Energy’s ESTCP grant to develop a cybersecurity platform for energy management and control systems.

The ESTCP program’s goal is to find the most promising and cost-effective technologies that address the DoD’s high-priority cybersecurity requirements. In this case, that requirement is to reduce energy costs while increasing security and energy resiliency in fixed DoD installations across the United States.

The key elements to the FoxGuard contract include building an automation system for asset recovery, identify vulnerabilities in the Bacnet field controllers, develop a process to patch the automation system, and continuous monitoring of cybersecurity controls.

The DoD is the largest consumer of energy in the US, with over 500,000 buildings and installations. Many of its bases, however, are dependent on a commercial power grid that is vulnerable to disruption from cyber-attacks, aging infrastructure, weather-related events and direct attack.

The program is based around the Risk Management Framework (RMF) to help DoD control system owners monitor building automation systems for vulnerabilities.