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Description
The NSA Technology Transfer Program (TTP), located within the Research Directorate, establishes partnerships with industry, academia, and other government agencies. These partnerships help accelerate mission goals, advance science, foster innovation, and promote the growth and commercialization of technology originally created for Agency mission. Successful transfer of NSA technologies:
- Gives traction to the federal government's annual commitment to research and development, not totaling over $145 billion
- Mobilizes mission solutions by engaging NSA personnel with trusted technology partners
- Creates new companies, new job jobs, and new revenue
- Strengthens the economy, which in turn strengthens national security
For a full listing of our technologies, please download our full-color, PDF Patent Portfolio here.
Mission
The NSA Technology Transfer Program (TTP) mission is to:
- Establish partnerships to transfer NSA discoveries into commercial products and practical applications that strengthen national security and help grow the economy, and
- Stimulate the exchange of expertise and capabilities between NSA and industry, academia, and other government agencies to advance NSA mission, technology, and innovation.
Our mission fulfills federal technology transfer legislation, White House Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) goals, and NSA mission objectives.
Tech Areas
This technology provides three methods of identifying invalid digital signatures in a group of signatures that have failed a batch verification test. The first two methods offer significant increase in speeds for processing batches of pairing-based digital signatures. The third method improves the efficiency of previous “divide-and-conquer” methods and has applications to both pairing-based and non-pairing-based digital signatures. High-speed bulk processing of digital signatures commonly starts with group processing until a failure occurs, at which point the process slows until bad signatures are segregated from the remainder of the batch. These new methods speed up the step of segregating the bad signatures that caused the batch to fail, allowing faster processing of large batches.
Click to view PDFs of these patents on the US Patent and Trademark Office website: Patent 7,890,763
| Patent Number | 7,890,763 |
| Patent Issue Date | Feb 15, 2011 |
US PATENT # 6,580,841 Chirped Fiber Acousto-Optic Bandpass Filter
US PATENT # 6,556,729 Acousto-Optic Bandpass Filter
This group of patented acousto-optic bandpass filters provide three varying methods of enabling one or more wavelength bands to be selected for further transmission. Signal switching is an important function in telecommunications. With the move to fiber optic cable transmissions, the demand for lower costs and higher switching speeds steadily increased, resulting in an increased need for optical switching. These technologies perform the function of bandpass filters at a lower cost, with lower power consumption, lower optical insertion loss, more versatility, and greater reliability than other bandpass filter technologies.
Click to view PDFs of these patents on the US Patent and Trademark Office website: Patent 6,647,159; Patent 6,580,841; Patent 6,556,729
| Patent Number | 6,647,159; 6,580,841; 6,556,729 |
| Patent Issue Date | Nov 11, 2003 |
US Patent # 7,761,286 Natural Language Database Searching Using Morphological Query Term Expansion
US Patent # 7,539,611 Method of Identifying and Highlighting Text
This technology is a combination of three inventions: two natural language database search methods and a method of identifying and highlighting text. The Tagger searches for transliterated terms (such as names) within large data sets using lexical, contextual, and morphological information. The Matcher is then applied to determine which candidate terms are known within the database and are therefore of likely increased interest to the reader. This knowledge-based system’s ability to work without relying on any one query language grants non-expert users access to an extensive collection of linguistic information and expertise. A typical application for this technology is name searching since names have unique linguistic and cultural complications and extracting names from data sources can be difficult.
| Patent Number | 7,797,152; 7,761,286; 7,539,611 |
| Patent Issue Date | Sep 14, 2010 |
This technology enables all-digital power amplification suited for small, battery- operated devices. Utilizing a sleep mode for the switching amplifier prolongs the battery life and increases efficiency in power usage. Reduced electromagnetic interference (EMI), which can degrade performance in surrounding elements, allows the amplifier to be employed without additional shielding. Both of these qualities make the system easier to conceal and reduce the cost of production.
Click to view PDFs of these patents on the US Patent and Trademark Office website: Patent 7,400,194
| Patent Number | 7,400,194 |
| Patent Issue Date | Jul 15, 2008 |
This patented method establishes a standard for translation metrics, offering analysis and feedback for grading and improving translation activities. When translating from a source language to a target language, word-for-word substitutions are not always adequate due to nuance, cultural variation, and native meaning. This technology provides user-definable ratings of accuracy, interpretation of intended message, and formatting, enabling effective language translation and interpretation of the source material. By not focusing on specific word choice, the technology is also able to more accurately assess the quality and accuracy translations and interpretations, taking concerns such as sentiment and content into account.
Click to view PDFs of these patents on the US Patent and Trademark Office website: Patent #8,185,373
| Patent Number | 8,185,373 |
| Patent Issue Date | May 22, 2012 |
This technology detects duplicate audio and voice recordings in a sample collection without relying on transcription or phonetic comparison for detection. This method is able to determine that two recordings of different lengths may be duplicates and two recordings of the same length may not be duplicates. This invention is independent of the recording’s language and content.
Click to view PDFs of these patents on the US Patent and Trademark Office website: Patent #7,571,093
| Patent Number | 7,571,093 |
| Patent Issue Date | Aug 04, 2009 |
(U) This technology yields an innovative approach to the search and discovery of a wide range of content and relationship information (ideas and concepts, as well as semantic, hierarchical, referential, and logical relationships) within a given corpus. Structured as a “knowledge system”, this process and system architecture will enable users to vary what types of information can be discovered by mapping documents into a reconfigurable data and knowledge model (DKM). The system also provides a single interface for users to discover concepts, documents, keywords, entities, and relationships, as well as to reason through logical content of documents by means of the rules knowledge base (RKB).
(U) Ultimately, the system enables machine-driven processing and automation of document structural and referential features by using a DKM to break documents into relevant features, such as titles, sections, section titles, authors, and references. Furthermore, the technology is intended to enhance automated reconstruction of documents, section-by-section, allowing users to view their full document textually, graphically, or by selecting specific document sections or tags.
Click to view PDFs of these patents on the US Patent and Trademark Office website: Patent #10,042,928
| Patent Number | 10,042,928 |
| Patent Issue Date | Dec 03, 2014 |
This language-agnostic technology automatically characterizes documents as handwritten, machine-printed, or unknown, enabling quick scoring and storing of images. The technology can be useful in maximizing the accuracy of optical character recognition (OCR) applications, resulting in the capability to more accurately search and sort large document collections.
Click to view PDFs of these patents on the US Patent and Trademark Office website: Patent #7,027,514
| Patent Number | 7,072,514 |
| Patent Issue Date | Jul 04, 2006 |
This technology automatically describes and categorizes the topic of text using nouns, allowing it to serve as a foundation for semantic interfacing with a knowledgebase. It has the advantage of not needing stop lists or extensive word stemming, which enables the tool to find words regardless of their form. Additionally, this technology provides results that are uniquely accurate by using a set list of nouns to concisely limit the search space and a probability-based measure of distance to categorize the topic.
Click to view PDFs of these patents on the US Patent and Trademark Office website: Patent #7,805,291
| Patent Number | 7,805,291 |
| Patent Issue Date | Sep 28, 2010 |
This technology eliminates the need to manually search audio files for speech content by automatically locating speech intervals that contain other signals such as music, noise, or even silence. It reports the start and stop times of these intervals relative to the beginning of the file, ignoring non-speech portions of the file. By classifying signal segments as speech or non-speech, this technology improves the performance of speaker recognition systems by reducing the amount of bandwidth and traffic to be analyzed.
Click to view PDFs of these patents on the US Patent and Trademark Office website: Patent #7,127,392
| Patent Number | 7,127,392 |
| Patent Issue Date | Oct 24, 2006 |
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Success Stories
Submit an Success StoryThe value of discrete pieces of intelligence to national security varies for many reasons, but among them, its perishability may be the most important. To ensure that the most important information was identified and prioritized across its communications infrastructure, NSA developed NiagaraFiles (NiFi)—technology that has helped manage the flow of data for NSA and across the entire Intelligence Community (IC).
NiFi automates the management, manipulation, and storage of large streams of data in real time. The technology can interpret and transform information in a variety of formats, facilitating transfer across different systems and agencies. The technology also provides interactive command and control of data flows, allowing engineers to quickly make changes in how data is assessed and transmitted. By automatically embedding context into discrete data flows as they move across and between systems, NiFi creates a fine-grained chain of custody for information, which led to organic interest across the IC.
The technology was released in 2014 to the open source software (OSS) community as Apache NiFi, where its source code is freely available to view, modify, and adapt. Open sourcing engages a much larger development community to continue the technology’s evolution and ensure it remains secured from emerging vulnerabilities. The improved Apache Nifi has been distributed across the Agency and has become the foundation of many corporate dataflow services. More than 60 non-federal contributors have developed features for Apache NiFi that are important for both government and industry. For example, within a month of the OSS release, a contributor from Germany identified a way to reduce the time it takes to compile NiFi’s codebase by 75%, allowing even greater agility and flexibility as the technology continues to evolve.
Several hundred companies worldwide are using Nifi, including Fortune 500 companies ExxonMobil, AT&T, CapitalOne, and the United Kingdom’s British Gas. Hortonworks, a Silicon Valley company that specializes in the commercial distribution of open source big data software, has developed two NiFi products as part of its suite of open source big data technology offerings.
As a side benefit, releasing technology to OSS is of interest to IT professionals because it promotes a free, collaborative exchange of ideas that spurs rapid creative, scientific, and technical advances. Tony Kurc, an NSA technical director and recruiter, says that “highlighting Apache NiFi as an OSS technology that originated at NSA is a great tool in attracting the brightest new hires.” Examples of how companies use NiFi are available at http://nifi.apache.org/powered-by-nifi.html.
The NSA patent portfolio features all of the agency's technologies that are available to license. View the NSA patent portfolio here: https://www.nsa.gov/what-we-do/research/technology-transfer/assets/files/nsa-technology-transfer-program.pdf
Ever wonder how secure your data really is after you hit “Send”? With the progression of the digital age, and an increase in dependence of those who rely on it, the protection of our information systems has not only become more complicated—it has also become a critical necessity. Systems and accounts need more than just a password to be protected; data must also be authenticated and encrypted in order to keep unauthorized users from accessing it. And while everyone knows the importance of protecting their personal data, few have mastered securing its access.
Kapalya, a Hawaii-based technology development company, hopes its latest offering will become a standard in data security; the company is using Agency-developed technology to ensure seamless end-to-end protection of data during transport. The technology was originally developed at NSA as a software program to encrypt and authenticate data for mission. With a powerful authentication mechanism, this technology is able to encrypt a message when sent and enables the recipient to authenticate the message upon receipt. Its easy implementation allows it to be used towards a variety of applications.
In March 2017, Kapalya signed a patent license agreement (PLA) for exclusive licensing rights to NSA’s authenticated cryptography technology. Exclusive licensing allows Kapalya to use and commercialize the technology as a unique product in the marketplace. The agreement has already paid off for Kapalya; it helped Sudesh Kumar, Kapalya CEO, win financial backing at a shark tank competition during the Future Focus conference sponsored by the Hawaii Business Roundtable and the University of Hawaii.
Kumar credits the exclusive license from NSA in setting him apart from the rest of the competition. “A game changer…that is how I describe the effect of licensing NSA technology on my business. The next generation of our data encryption app will have NSA’s patented technology as the foundation. Once released commercially, this app will be cryptographically stronger and more efficient than existing authenticated encryption solutions in the marketplace.”
The NSA patent portfolio features all of the agency's technologies that are available to license. View the NSA patent portfolio here: https://www.nsa.gov/what-we-do/research/technology-transfer/assets/files/nsa-technology-transfer-program.pdf
Being able to save time, money, and effort while achieving mission can be easily classified as a “win-win situation” for everyone involved. Fortunately, researchers at NSA Hawaii (NSAH) are doing just that.
NSAH is training machine learning models to further develop algorithms that will generate a topical list and, eventually, visual images of words. The goal is to provide any user with a topical word list so that the user can quickly assign a meaning and perspective to foreign language content, without having any prior knowledge of that language. In need of a better way to continue their research, NSAH discovered Hawaii-based startup AlgorithmHub at a speed networking event and quickly saw potential in what the company had to offer.
To meet NSAH requirements, the NSA TTP finalized a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with AlgorithmHub to apply their data science cloud compute environment to NSA’s unclassified machine learning research problems. The partnership with AlgorithmHub allows NSA researchers to deploy algorithms in a cloud environment without lengthy delays and costs associated with provisioning and maintaining virtual machines. AlgorithmHub’s unique Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for commercial cloud services provides data scientists with the ability to experiment and share their data science algorithms while leveraging the compute power and storage capacity of the cloud. The partnership has also enabled AlgorithmHub to improve their services, as well. John Bay, CEO of AlgorithmHub, says, “Through our CRADA with a data science team at the NSA, we have enhanced efficiency and effectiveness in evaluating machine learning algorithms for topic identification. These new features are not only valued by data scientists at the NSA, but also with other AlgorithmHub customers. The CRADA has provided us critical feedback and validation needed to continue to evolve the AlgorithmHub platform into an innovative, commercially viable product.”
After a highly successful data science workshop with NSA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Institute of Defense Analysis (IDA), NSA hosted a topic modeling cohort, subsequently extending testing and evaluation time in the AlgorithmHub environment. A more comprehensive upcoming workshop includes broader participation and will further refine the model for additional use of the AlgorithmHub platform by NSAH. This effort is developing a model for continuing collaboration for data analytics development for use across the enterprise and with other researchers in academia and industry.
The NSA patent portfolio features all of the agency's technologies that are available to license. View the NSA patent portfolio here: https://www.nsa.gov/what-we-do/research/technology-transfer/assets/files/nsa-technology-transfer-program.pdf
Though organizations focus on firewalls and security software, multitudes of open network ports on computers, routers, and Voice of Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone jacks in public and seemingly secured areas create an often overlooked cyber vulnerability that can result in unauthorized network access. Access to these open data ports can result in covert extraction of data and introduction of malware onto systems. Often, evidence of such breaches comes long after the damage has been done.
NSA’s data port protection technologies provide an innovative layer of defense for vulnerable open data ports by deterring access and ensuring that there is visible evidence of any attempt to tamper with the port. This technology was developed and was quickly adopted at NSA as an effective security measure for our military counterparts. It was shared across the IC until its popularity ultimately spurred a search for an industry partner to manufacture the port protectors, keep pace with government demand, and commercialize the product to broaden the customer base.
The NSA TTP was successful in activating several patent license agreements with PadJack, Inc., a Florida-based company providing NSA and its mission partners with a more direct and efficient method of production and supply. With the help of a growing workforce, PadJack has developed five new products from these NSA technologies for both government and commercial use, uses two manufacturing facilities, and has sales that continue to increase. Today, every branch of the military, the IC, and leading-edge firms are using PadJack products to enhance their information assurance security posture. PadJack Founder and CEO Jim Bolain says, “Licensing NSA’s port protector technology has allowed us to expand our market share and add new product lines. As a small business, we benefited from the NSA TTP’s work to create a partnership that scales to our needs as we grow. “
In 2017, the NSA TTP received the Federal Laboratory Consortium’s Excellence in Technology Transfer Award for this lab-to-market success.
The NSA patent portfolio features all of the agency's technologies that are available to license. View the NSA patent portfolio here: https://www.nsa.gov/what-we-do/research/technology-transfer/assets/files/nsa-technology-transfer-program.pdf
National Security Agency server port protection devices guard against cyber crime. Network breaches an data loss are threats that impact everyone. But not everyone knows that the common device port can be one of the biggest cyber vulnerabilities. The commercialized devices provide a physical layer of cyber security.