SBIR/STTR Award attributes
Business Enterprise Systems Product Innovation (BESPIN) and the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) Cloud One Team have a national defense-related mission need in the area of Mobile Authentication using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology that is already incorporated into modern smartphones and can read a Common Access Card (CAC) for Air Force (AF) approved Cloud providers. Our Mobile Authentication Control Element with an Integrated NFC Derived Unit (Mace Windu) will enable Warfighters to securely apply multi-factor authentication to access any application, from any device, anywhere. This NFC unit supports a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and two-factor authentication (2FA) platform on mobile devices providing our Warfighters a secure and efficient way to access secure data without sacrificing productivity and/or cybersecurity. The BESPIN platform is designed to be a mobile software factory, however, is currently challenged by the ability to provide operational mobile authentication capabilities for our Warfighters as the threats and the capabilities of our adversaries increase. As smart phones, smart cards, and other smart devices continue to become pervasive in our daily lives, we see an opportunity to connect such smart devices with our Warfighter. This opportunity provides a mobile authentication control element with and integrated NFC derived unit platform for our Warfighters, giving them flexibility and interoperability, which is trusted, efficient, and user-friendly, therefore our main goal of this project. We believe the Mace Windu Platform developed under the subject SBIR topic will contribute to solving a real mission need which is essential in the current sociopolitical environment requiring our Warfighters to work largely from home and on the move due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As end users, developers, and stakeholders are separated and displaced due to events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, these enhancements and unlocking of data from the 400+ PEO BES Programs will ease geographical separation and create a more extensible and efficient way to continue building out mobile capability. Therefore, the mission impact of this project on the Air Force and the DoD will position BESPIN to develop a 2FA Mobile Authentication digital card reader using NFC technology that allows Warfighters to support Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Certificates/Personal Identity Verification (PIV) credentials for network applications, encryption, and digital signatures on a mobile device using their CAC, meeting the HSPD-12 mandate.
