Intrusion detection systems used by governmental agencies, large companies and others who want to prevent cyber attacks could soon be turbocharged with a highly sophisticated tool being developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Oak Ridge Cyber Analytics, dubbed ORCA, greatly boosts the performance of existing cyber attack systems by filtering noise and quickly making sense of massive amounts of data.

 "ORCA effectively sits on top of off-the-shelf intrusion detection systems and its correlation engine processes information and learns as cyber events arrive," said Justin Beaver, who leads the development team. Key features include ORCA's ability to interact with the operator, its flexibility and configurability.

Cyber security is becoming an increasingly bigger national concern as a recent Congressional Research Service study pegged the cost of cyber attacks on businesses at $226 billion annually.

Lockheed Martin funded this project, and has integrated this capability into its Defense and Self-Healing Networks experimental cyber defense system.