About IACD

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Integrated Adaptive Cyber Defense (IACD) is a strategy and framework to adopt an extensible, adaptive, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)-based approach to cybersecurity operations.

IACD increases the speed and scale of cyber defenses by leveraging automation to enhance the effectiveness of human defenders, moving them outside the response loop into a response planning and approval role “on the loop” of cyber defense.

This effort is sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Security Agency (NSA) in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL). Through jointly sponsored research (in collaboration with the private sector), IACD defines a framework—including reference architectures, draft specifications for interoperability, use cases, and implementation examples—to adopt this extensible, adaptive approach to cybersecurity operations.

Our goal is to dramatically change the timeline and effectiveness of cyber defense via integration, automation, and information sharing. By executing a series of reference implementations through rapid iteration, IACD is able to explore different use cases. These use cases are used to provide insights to:

  • Prove concepts by integrating commercial products

  • Provide insights to potential challenges

  • Identify gaps in technology, available commercial solutions, policies, and standards

  • Gather requirements to facilitate appropriate standards development

IACD Research

To further develop the framework, IACD is actively involved in research to provide a more integrated and safe defense. IACD’s primary mission objective has been to further the understanding of cyber security and defense. Actively conducting research in areas involving active cyber defenses and healthy cyber ecosystems, IACD has continued to revolutionize cyber security. To learn more about past research, take a look at the IACD Research page.

Contact IACD

The IACD headquarters are located at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland. For any questions or inquiries about IACD hosted events, framework, research, and more at icd@iacdautomate.org.