Northrop Grumman Opens UK Cyber Security Test Range for the Evaluation of Threats on Large Scale Networks

By Northrop Grumman Corporation, PRNE
Thursday, October 21, 2010

LONDON, October 22, 2010 - Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) has formally opened at its
Fareham facility, the first commercially available federated cyber test range
in the UK. The cyber range will be used for emulating large complex networks
and for conducting cyber experiments and assessments of infrastructure
survivability and assurance within a safe and controlled experimental
environment to evaluate their resilience to cyber attacks. The UK cyber range
has been designed to be federated with other cyber ranges anywhere in the
world to create the capability for large-scale experiments to be carried out
beyond the scope of a single facility.

The federated cyber range was officially opened in Fareham by Gerald
Howarth MP, Minister for International Security Strategy, Ministry of
Defence, in a ceremony attended by more than 50 guests from across
government, industry and academia. Among the guests attending the event was
Jean Valentine, one of the first operators of the bombe decryption device at
Britain's Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park during
the Second World War designed to break the coded messages encrypted by the
German Enigma machines.

"Cyber security is a growing challenge which threatens government and
commerce. Accordingly, the National Security Strategy which we have announced
this week, has given it the high priority that it rightly deserves," said
Gerald Howarth MP, Minister for International Security Strategy. "As we
increase our capability to protect ourselves, not only against cyber attacks
on the government but on businesses and on individuals, the cyber test range
being unveiled here today will play an important part in understanding
evolving threats and ensuring that critical networks are safe and properly
protected."

The UK cyber range will be able to emulate large infrastructures and
global threats and evaluate how these networks, whether military, civilian or
commercial, respond to an attack in order to develop capabilities that will
make these networks more secure. The cyber range recreates the real-world
environment to the highest degree practicable in a closed system, allowing
the system to be driven to total failure ensuring the impact of cyber attacks
on the systems and how to keep systems operating through them is fully
understood.

"Hostile penetrations of cyber systems in both government and industry
are widespread, successful and growing. Cyber security is a fundamental
necessity for protecting our critical national infrastructure and our new
federated cyber range will be a major UK resource for building, testing and
validating technologies as rapidly and efficiently as possible," said Sir
Nigel Essenhigh, chairman of Northrop Grumman UK and chief executive of
Northrop Grumman Information Systems Europe. "With the unique capabilities of
this new cyber range, Northrop Grumman is set to become one of the UK's
leading cyber solutions providers."

The UK range will be federated with the existing US cyber range and
internet research laboratory located in Northrop Grumman's Cyberspace
Solutions Centre (CSSC) in Maryland. This is dedicated both to independent
research and development on cyber security projects as well as to carrying
out customer contracts. The company has also opened in the US a
state-of-the-art Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC), a comprehensive
cyber threat detection and response centre that focuses on protecting
Northrop Grumman and its customers' networks and data worldwide.

"One of the challenges for research into computer network operations and
cyber security is experimentation and testing under controlled conditions. We
need a test platform that is large enough to provide realistic environments
and flexible enough to create many scenarios without creating risk for
Internet users. Because our cyber range is federated we are able to address
this challenge on a larger scale than previously possible, creating a robust,
safe experimental environment for emulating, attacking and evaluating large
network operations and cyber security defence," said Dr. Robert Brammer, vice
president and chief technology officer for Northrop Grumman's Information
Systems Sector. "A wide variety of host domains can be built and subjected to
many types of both external and internal cyber exploits and the results
recorded and analyzed. With our cyber range we can find problems and
solutions that you can't find any other way."

The UK cyber range will initially be used by Northrop Grumman in
collaboration with BT, Oxford University (Said Business School), Warwick
University
(School of Engineering) and Imperial College (Electrical and
Electronic Engineering) to conduct a series of experiments under the SATURN
(Self-organising Adaptive Technology Under Resilient Networks) network
defence research programme, a research project focused on information
infrastructure. SATURN is a collaborative research programme funded by the UK
Technology Strategy Board (TSB) with the aim of improving the resilience of
the UK critical national infrastructure.

Northrop Grumman is an industry leader in all aspects of computer network
operations and cyber security and is at the forefront of the challenge to
find innovative solutions that can effectively defend networks and offer
protection across the entire cyber domain. For more information about
Northrop Grumman's capabilities in cyber security, go to
www.northropgrumman.com/cybersecurity.

Northrop Grumman has a strong presence in the UK and operates from
primary locations in London, Fareham, Chester, Coventry, Hendon, New Malden,
Peterborough, RAF Waddington and Solihull and provides avionics,
communications, electronic warfare systems, marine navigation systems,
unmanned ground vehicle systems, C4ISR solutions and mission planning, IT
systems and software development and aircraft whole life support.

Northrop Grumman Corporation is a leading global security company whose
120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in
aerospace, electronics, information systems, shipbuilding and technical
services to government and commercial customers worldwide. Please visit
www.northropgrumman.com for more information.

Ken Beedle of Northrop Grumman Corporation, +44-0-207-747-1910, +44-0-7787-174092, Ken.beedle at euro.ngc.com

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