Maryland–based cybersecurity company opens Rome satellite lab

ROME — Rsignia, Inc., a Maryland–based cybersecurity technology company, opened a new satellite lab at the Griffiss Institute at 725 Daedalian Drive in Rome in early April.

Rsignia established the 240-square-foot lab to gain a foothold in upstate New York, according to Nancy Dillman, Rsignia’s president, CEO, and majority owner, citing the region’s “great talent pool” and business opportunities as decisive factors.

One such opportunity is with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Information Directorate, which is located at the same site — the Griffiss Business and Technology Park — as the institute. The AFRL conducts research for new and affordable cyber technologies, and other technologies, according to its website.

The Griffiss Institute is a nonprofit that conducts technology transfer activities. Specifically, it takes “technology that is in the Air Force Research Laboratory portfolio and [tries] to bring it out into the world and commercialize it,” says James Cusack, principal engineer at the institute.

The Griffiss Institute is providing Rsignia with the lab space at no cost — for the time being, at least — through its business incubator program, according to Cusack. Apart from the lab space, the institute offers Rsignia high-speed Internet access, gives advice regarding government contracting work, and connects it to parts of the AFRL that are relevant to the company’s field, says Cusack.

In return, says Griffiss Institute Director William Wolf, Rsignia shares some of its services. For example, it provides solutions to some of the institute’s IT issues, and has worked to improve both the capabilities and the safety measures of the institute’s large research network. Cusack says once the company begins to generate profits, the institute will explore charging Rsignia for use of its facilities.

Rsignia has four employees — one full time and three part time — staffing the new lab. Eventually, says Dillman, it would like to have about 25 employees working from there. The company as a whole currently has 10 employees — five full time, and five part time.

“We think that would be sufficient enough to support various projects that we have in the works,” she says, adding that positions in Rome, at least in the first year, will remain a mix of part and full time, and will ideally be filled by people living in the area.

Most new positions would be created for engineers. Mathematics, telecommunications, big data analysis, and eventually biometrics analysis are areas that will be in demand, says Joshua S. White, Rsignia’s chief scientist and vice president, and the lone full-time employee at the Rome lab.

Rsignia’s focus

The company’s focus within the cybersecurity realm is in social-network analysis, in which White says he has an extensive background. White is an Ithaca native who earned his doctorate in engineering science from Clarkson University. He teaches at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, near Utica.

The company analyzes social-network data for a variety of purposes, according to White. Work at the lab is focused on developing a large, distributed system that can analyze data from different customers with different needs. It is developing several tools for this general purpose, some for commercial use and others for government.

One use for analyzing social-network data is to conduct predictive modeling of human behavior, according to White, which he says can be used to detect potential security threats.

“You can develop things like psychological profiles of people based on the things that they write and the things that they post,” he says, the purpose being “to do predictive modeling to see whether or not they’re, let’s say, going to become an extremist or launch a cyber attack.” This is done, he explains, by looking at a person’s online behavior over longer periods of time.

In the hypothetical situation of an underground chat room where participants are discussing hacking into a website, for example, “more than 99 percent of it is just a bunch of hype. It’s just a bunch of people talking,” says White. “The question is, can you single out that one person that truly is the bad guy?” Rsignia develops profiles of very specific types of people who could be a threat, and then sifts through data looking for them, according to White.

Rsignia is nearing the release of its first commercial product of the year, called Cyberscope, which is a suite of services that offers, amongst other things, flexible social-network analysis. White says organizations such as universities or news agencies, for example, may purchase Cyberscope in order to gain a good understanding of the organization’s “state or role in the world of social media.”

Other capabilities he listed include situational awareness, content inspection, intelligent monitoring and forensics, and countermeasure, alert, and offensive operations.

He says Cyberscope is nearly complete. Pieces like instruction manuals and marketing materials are in the works in preparation for its release.

Strategic partnerships

Dillman says the collective presence, in Rome, of Research Associates of Syracuse (111 Dart Circle), the Cyber Research Institute (725 Daedalian Drive), and the AFRL Information Directorate (26 Electronic Parkway), made the decision to set up shop in the area “strategically” smart.

Research Associates of Syracuse (RAS) works in the area of electronic warfare, according to its website, in support of the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community. It focuses on electronic support, electronic attack, and signals intelligence.

According to White, RAS designs and builds hardware that is able to compute statistics from live data feeds very quickly. Its technology, he adds, can be adapted to work with Rsignia’s algorithms, which would allow Rsignia to compute its type of data much faster than it could before.

For example, says White, to analyze live Twitter feeds means processing “10s of millions of messages a day,” and to do Rsignia’s type of data analysis, “you would need an entire rack of servers … Research Associates of Syracuse can do all of it on a single, little, tiny card the size of a matchbook.”

The Cyber Research Institute (CRI), according to its website, is a collaboration of institutions that largely seeks to promote partnerships in order to protect and improve the cyber-based economy, infrastructure, and workforce in New York.

CRI helps confirm Rsignia’s mathematics in some projects, as well as to look over its reports and help with proposals, says White. CRI also has extra space that Rsignia can use when needed.

Partnerships between Rsignia and each institution were established in the past few weeks, says White. The process was aided by his past work experience with the vice president of software programs at RAS, John Stacy, as well as CRI’s executive director, John Bay.

Rsignia is also working on growing its relationship with the AFRL Information Directorate.

“We are working out some agreements with them to, kind of, share our technology and share resources back and forth,” says White. “AFRL has a great internal program for development of different technologies. They have a really great record of passing things, and a lot of those technologies are available for commercial organizations to actually take out, license, and then integrate into their product. So we’re working with them to do that same sort of thing. But they’re also interested in bringing in some of our technology because we do have unique mathematical algorithms and ways of computing data very quickly.”

Rebooting Rsignia

Rsignia is part of the Griffiss Institute’s incubation program because it is, essentially a start-up. A more accurate description would be to call it a “reboot.” Founded in 2008 by its current chief technology officer, Darrell Covell, it had not been in operation since the end of 2012. That year, says Dillman, the company’s president, “some of [Rsignia’s] assets were acquired by a larger defense contractor who really wanted some of the technology” that Rsignia had developed.

Covell, who Dillman describes as a serial entrepreneur, decided to work with the defense contractor for two years in order to help it incubate the technology. During this period, Rsignia lay dormant.

After his two-year stint with the contractor, says Dillman, Covell decided to reboot Rsignia, saying that he missed the agility that a small company allows, the ability to get things done quickly and to pursue more innovative technology.

Dillman says she and White both joined Rsignia on Feb. 2, in essence restarting the Rsignia engine. White says he has worked with Covell in the past, the first time around 15 years ago when White was a junior engineer. White says he was working for a company that was subcontracted under another that Covell either worked for or owned.

Dillman says she spent most of her life in the federal government. “I knew what sort of capabilities, products, and services were out there to help government,” she says. “I knew what we didn’t have, and what we needed.”

Rsignia doesn’t have any other products slated to come out this year, according to White, but it does have two in the pipeline: one for early 2016, and one for mid-2016. He would not say what the products are, adding that the firm has dozens on the drawing board that are being explored.        

ROME — Rsignia, Inc., a Maryland–based cybersecurity technology company, opened a new satellite lab at the Griffiss Institute at 725 Daedalian Drive in Rome in early April.

Rsignia established the 240-square-foot lab to gain a foothold in upstate New York, according to Nancy Dillman, Rsignia’s president, CEO, and majority owner, citing the region’s “great talent pool” and business opportunities as decisive factors.

One such opportunity is with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Information Directorate, which is located at the same site — the Griffiss Business and Technology Park — as the institute. The AFRL conducts research for new and affordable cyber technologies, and other technologies, according to its website.

The Griffiss Institute is a nonprofit that conducts technology transfer activities. Specifically, it takes “technology that is in the Air Force Research Laboratory portfolio and [tries] to bring it out into the world and commercialize it,” says James Cusack, principal engineer at the institute.

The Griffiss Institute is providing Rsignia with the lab space at no cost — for the time being, at least — through its business incubator program, according to Cusack. Apart from the lab space, the institute offers Rsignia high-speed Internet access, gives advice regarding government contracting work, and connects it to parts of the AFRL that are relevant to the company’s field, says Cusack.

In return, says Griffiss Institute Director William Wolf, Rsignia shares some of its services. For example, it provides solutions to some of the institute’s IT issues, and has worked to improve both the capabilities and the safety measures of the institute’s large research network. Cusack says once the company begins to generate profits, the institute will explore charging Rsignia for use of its facilities.

Rsignia has four employees — one full time and three part time — staffing the new lab. Eventually, says Dillman, it would like to have about 25 employees working from there. The company as a whole currently has 10 employees — five full time, and five part time.

“We think that would be sufficient enough to support various projects that we have in the works,” she says, adding that positions in Rome, at least in the first year, will remain a mix of part and full time, and will ideally be filled by people living in the area.

Most new positions would be created for engineers. Mathematics, telecommunications, big data analysis, and eventually biometrics analysis are areas that will be in demand, says Joshua S. White, Rsignia’s chief scientist and vice president, and the lone full-time employee at the Rome lab.

Rsignia’s focus

The company’s focus within the cybersecurity realm is in social-network analysis, in which White says he has an extensive background. White is an Ithaca native who earned his doctorate in engineering science from Clarkson University. He teaches at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, near Utica.

The company analyzes social-network data for a variety of purposes, according to White. Work at the lab is focused on developing a large, distributed system that can analyze data from different customers with different needs. It is developing several tools for this general purpose, some for commercial use and others for government.

One use for analyzing social-network data is to conduct predictive modeling of human behavior, according to White, which he says can be used to detect potential security threats.

“You can develop things like psychological profiles of people based on the things that they write and the things that they post,” he says, the purpose being “to do predictive modeling to see whether or not they’re, let’s say, going to become an extremist or launch a cyber attack.” This is done, he explains, by looking at a person’s online behavior over longer periods of time.

In the hypothetical situation of an underground chat room where participants are discussing hacking into a website, for example, “more than 99 percent of it is just a bunch of hype. It’s just a bunch of people talking,” says White. “The question is, can you single out that one person that truly is the bad guy?” Rsignia develops profiles of very specific types of people who could be a threat, and then sifts through data looking for them, according to White.

Rsignia is nearing the release of its first commercial product of the year, called Cyberscope, which is a suite of services that offers, amongst other things, flexible social-network analysis. White says organizations such as universities or news agencies, for example, may purchase Cyberscope in order to gain a good understanding of the organization’s “state or role in the world of social media.”

Other capabilities he listed include situational awareness, content inspection, intelligent monitoring and forensics, and countermeasure, alert, and offensive operations.

He says Cyberscope is nearly complete. Pieces like instruction manuals and marketing materials are in the works in preparation for its release.

Strategic partnerships

Dillman says the collective presence, in Rome, of Research Associates of Syracuse (111 Dart Circle), the Cyber Research Institute (725 Daedalian Drive), and the AFRL Information Directorate (26 Electronic Parkway), made the decision to set up shop in the area “strategically” smart.

Research Associates of Syracuse (RAS) works in the area of electronic warfare, according to its website, in support of the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community. It focuses on electronic support, electronic attack, and signals intelligence.

According to White, RAS designs and builds hardware that is able to compute statistics from live data feeds very quickly. Its technology, he adds, can be adapted to work with Rsignia’s algorithms, which would allow Rsignia to compute its type of data much faster than it could before.

For example, says White, to analyze live Twitter feeds means processing “10s of millions of messages a day,” and to do Rsignia’s type of data analysis, “you would need an entire rack of servers … Research Associates of Syracuse can do all of it on a single, little, tiny card the size of a matchbook.”

The Cyber Research Institute (CRI), according to its website, is a collaboration of institutions that largely seeks to promote partnerships in order to protect and improve the cyber-based economy, infrastructure, and workforce in New York.

CRI helps confirm Rsignia’s mathematics in some projects, as well as to look over its reports and help with proposals, says White. CRI also has extra space that Rsignia can use when needed.

Partnerships between Rsignia and each institution were established in the past few weeks, says White. The process was aided by his past work experience with the vice president of software programs at RAS, John Stacy, as well as CRI’s executive director, John Bay.

Rsignia is also working on growing its relationship with the AFRL Information Directorate.

“We are working out some agreements with them to, kind of, share our technology and share resources back and forth,” says White. “AFRL has a great internal program for development of different technologies. They have a really great record of passing things, and a lot of those technologies are available for commercial organizations to actually take out, license, and then integrate into their product. So we’re working with them to do that same sort of thing. But they’re also interested in bringing in some of our technology because we do have unique mathematical algorithms and ways of computing data very quickly.”

Rebooting Rsignia

Rsignia is part of the Griffiss Institute’s incubation program because it is, essentially a start-up. A more accurate description would be to call it a “reboot.” Founded in 2008 by its current chief technology officer, Darrell Covell, it had not been in operation since the end of 2012. That year, says Dillman, the company’s president, “some of [Rsignia’s] assets were acquired by a larger defense contractor who really wanted some of the technology” that Rsignia had developed.

Covell, who Dillman describes as a serial entrepreneur, decided to work with the defense contractor for two years in order to help it incubate the technology. During this period, Rsignia lay dormant.

After his two-year stint with the contractor, says Dillman, Covell decided to reboot Rsignia, saying that he missed the agility that a small company allows, the ability to get things done quickly and to pursue more innovative technology.

Dillman says she and White both joined Rsignia on Feb. 2, in essence restarting the Rsignia engine. White says he has worked with Covell in the past, the first time around 15 years ago when White was a junior engineer. White says he was working for a company that was subcontracted under another that Covell either worked for or owned.

Dillman says she spent most of her life in the federal government. “I knew what sort of capabilities, products, and services were out there to help government,” she says. “I knew what we didn’t have, and what we needed.”

Rsignia doesn’t have any other products slated to come out this year, according to White, but it does have two in the pipeline: one for early 2016, and one for mid-2016. He would not say what the products are, adding that the firm has dozens on the drawing board that are being explored.