Lineaje, the full-lifecycle software supply chain security company, has successfully secured a $1.8 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase II contract by AFWERX, the Department of the Air Force (DAF) innovation arm.
According to certain reports, the company is understood to have earned the maximnatum funding amount for Phase II participants, something which should empower it to build upon the successful completion of Phase I. In case you weren’t aware, during the Phase I, Lineaje proved the value of its enriched Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) generation, vulnerability discovery, tamper detection, as well as foreign code contributors in mission-critical third-party open-source software.
To understand the significance of such a development, we must take into account one report from Lineaje AI Labs, where it was revealed that nearly all software weaknesses (95%) are a byproduct of open-source dependencies, the same components that power 90% of applications. These weaknesses include poor visibility, an expanded threat surface from AI-driven systems, along with a lack of tools and processes to analyze critical software and their supply chains, each one playing a big role in the uptick of software supply chain attacks.
In fact, if we take a separate research into consideration, from Enterprise Strategy Group – now part of Omdia, a staggering 91% of enterprises fell victim to software supply chain incidents last year.
Now, with the sensitive nature of national security data in applications built and bought by the U.S. Air Force and other federal entities, it has become imperative for these holistic view of the software supply chain and auto-remediation capabilities to not only protect against today’s threat actors but to also effectively neutralize the threats of tomorrow.
As a result, for the second phase, Lineaje plans on fine-tuning its recently launched self-healing software supply chain capabilities using autonomous vulnerability remediation of production container images and source code. More on the company’s technology would reveal how it automatically detects compatibility to facilitate repairs of open-source vulnerabilities in applications without breakage.
Not just that, the underlying solution also verifies component integrity, and at the same time, enforces software assurance continuously and at scale.
As for the STTR program, DAF brought it to life in 2018 for the primary purpose of fostering collaboration between public and private sectors to eventually accelerate federal research and development.
More recently, though, the Air Force Research Laboratory and AFWERX partnered to streamline the SBIR and STTR process. This they did on the back of faster proposal-to-award timelines, a renewed pool of potential applicants, and by eliminating bureaucratic overhead using consistent process improvement changes in contract execution.
All in all, thanks to the Phase II program, Lineaje will try and establish the scientific, technical, and commercial merit of its end-to-end capabilities that, on their part, can transform how the DAF protects its most critical software.
Founded in 2021, Lineaje’s rise up the ranks stems from providing full-lifecycle software supply chain security to meet the specific compliance, governance and efficiency needs of organizations that source, build or buy critical software. The company’s solutions are presently helping customers deliver zero-vulnerability code, comply with key regulations, manage SBOMs, assess third-party vendor risks, correlate risk data to better inform responses and build self-healing software supply chains.
Lineaje’s excellence in what it does can also be understood once you consider it is trusted, as of today, by top technology, financial, and public sector organizations that need to secure and manage critical code, complex software supply chains, and large software portfolios.
“The escalating threat of adversaries compromising military software supply chains demands a defense that is not merely proactive, but strategically anticipatory,” asserted Nick Mistry, SVP and CISO of Lineaje. “Receiving the maximum AFWERX award underscores the Department of the Air Force’s unwavering commitment to comprehensively securing its entire software stack. Our cutting-edge, automated remediation capabilities will empower the Air Force to deploy mission-critical software continuously, without introducing undue risks, thereby profoundly strengthening our nation’s digital infrastructure.”
