AI-Powered Drone Cybersecurity System Created

By Mike Ball / 27 Jan 2021
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SparkCognition SkyGrid AI-Powered Drone Cybersecurity System

Industrial artificial intelligence (AI) developer SparkCognition has created a new AI-powered cybersecurity solution designed to protect drones from zero-day attacks during flight. SkyGrid is an airspace management system equipped with SparkCognition’s DeepArmor cybersecurity product, which provides greater airspace security than traditional anti-malware that is reliant on signatures of known threats.

SkyGrid fuses DeepArmor with the AerialOS airspace management system, and can be deployed directly on drone hardware to function even when network connectivity is impaired or non-existent. The onboard AI uses models trained on actual malicious files instead of relying on a signature database or rules-based approaches, thus providing efficient protection against zero-day attacks.

Amir Husain, CEO and founder of SparkCognition and SkyGrid, commented: “In the near future, we’ll essentially have a network of flying computers in the sky, and just like the computers we use today, drones can be hacked if not secured properly. In this emerging environment, traditional anti-malware technology won’t be adequate to detect these never-before-seen attacks. SkyGrid is taking a new, intelligent approach by using AI to more accurately detect and prevent cyberattacks from impacting a drone, a payload, or a ground station.”

Sridhar Sudarsan, Chief Technology Officer at SparkCognition, said: “We leveraged cutting-edge AI research and technology to build the DeepArmor product, which allows it to protect endpoints against 99.9% of never-before-seen threats. In addition, the product’s uniqueness lies in its ability to provide top-rate endpoint protection on the lowest footprint with minimal interference – all in varying degrees of connectivity. This is the true overarching security differentiator from which SkyGrid’s customers will see value.”

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Posted by Mike Ball Mike Ball is our resident technical editor here at Unmanned Systems Technology. Combining his passion for teaching, advanced engineering and all things unmanned, Mike keeps a watchful eye over everything related to the unmanned technical sector. With over 10 years’ experience in the unmanned field and a degree in engineering, Mike’s been heading up our technical team here for the last 8 years. Connect & Contact