Homeland Open Security Technology (HOST) is a five-year, $10 million program by the

Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-terr ...

's Science and Technology Directorate to promote the creation and use of

open security Open security is the use of open source philosophies and methodologies to approach computer security and other information security challenges. Traditional application security is based on the premise that any application or service (whether it is ...

and

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

in the United States government and military, especially in areas pertaining to

computer security Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, t ...

. Proponent David A. Wheeler claims that open-source security could also extend to hardware and written documents. In October 2011, the project won the

Open Source for America Open Source for America (OSFA) consortium of various organizations established to advocate for and support the use of free and open-source software in the U.S. Federal government. It consists of various open source foundations, and companies, incl ...

2011 Government Deployment Open Source Award.

Participants

The project is contracted to the Open Technology Research Consortium which consists of the Georgia Tech Research Institute (primary), the Center for Agile Technology at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

, the

Open Source Software Institute The Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) is a U.S.-based 501(c)(6), non-profit organization whose mission is to promote the development and implementation of open-source software solutions within US Federal, state and municipal government agencie ...

, and the Open Information Security Foundation. The project has contributed funding towards the OpenSSL Software Foundation and the Open Information Security Foundation.

Events

In October 2012, HOST hosted the Open Cybersecurity Summit in Washington, D.C.; it was a one-day summit with a keynote by Stewart A. Baker, former Assistant Secretary for Policy of the Department of Homeland Security.

Investments

* Suricata - An open source-based intrusion detection system (IDS). It was developed by the Open Information Security Foundation (OISF). A beta version was released in December 2009, with the first standard release following in July 2010. * OpenSSL FIPS 140-2 Validation - The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Publication 140-2, FIPS PUB 140-2, is a U.S. government computer security standard used to accredit cryptographic modules. The title is Security Requirements for Cryptographic Modules. Initial publication was on May 25, 2001 and was last updated December 3, 2002.

References

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External links

Homeland Open Security Technology (HOST)

Open Information Security Foundation (OISF)
Georgia Tech Research Institute United States Department of Homeland Security 2011 in computing Computer security Information technology projects