Organisations and solution providers can apply for funding to: 1) undertake paper-based landscape mapping to evaluate the market maturity of AI or other novel technologies to operate as a ‘Red Agent’ penetration tester, and 2) provide a test environment and to subsequently undertake practical testing to evaluate the feasibility of AI or other novel technologies to operate as a ‘Red Agent’ penetration tester.

HMGCC Co-Creation will provide funding for time, material, overheads and other indirect expenses.

Key information

Budget per single organisation, up to £60,000 per workstream (plus call-off)
Project duration 12 weeks
Competition opens Thursday 17 October 2024
Competition closes Thursday 21 November 2024 at 5:00pm

Context of the challenge

HMGCC is co-ordinating a Co-Creation challenge to further the security community’s understanding of AI or any novel technologies that have the capacity to penetration test secure IT environments. Scripting based technologies are excluded as these are mature and available as commercial products.

This Co-Creation challenge aims to evaluate the readiness of the technologies, their capabilities and integration needs. This will be achieved by evaluating ease of adaption and integration.

The challenge is being delivered across two workstreams delivered in parallel over 12-weeks, as illustrated in the full challenge information document.

One workstream will identify the capabilities of autonomous Red Agent tools, measuring them up in a paper-based assessment against the major factors involved in how they would be used.

The second workstream will involve taking a small group of these tools forward (if they passed the initial workstream test) into an assessment of how they work in practice. We anticipate testing between 3 to 6 Red Agent tools. The results from both workstream tests will then be assessed together. Collaborative development might then be undertaken to help further test and improve the most promising tools where appropriate.

Who should apply?

This challenge is open to sole innovators, industry, academic and research organisations of all types and sizes. There is no requirement for security clearances.
Solution providers or direct collaboration from countries listed by the UK government under trade sanctions and/or arms embargoes, are not eligible for HMGCC Co-Creation challenges.

Evaluation criteria

All proposals, regardless of the application route, will be assessed by the HMGCC Co-Creation team. Proposals will be scored 1–5 on the following criteria:

Scope: Does the proposal fit within the challenge scope, taking into consideration cost and benefit?

Innovation: Is the technical solution credible, will it create new knowledge and IP, or use existing IP?

Deliverables: Will the proposal deliver a full or partial solution, if a partial solution, are there collaborations identified?

Timescale: Will the proposal deliver a minimum viable product within the project duration?

Budget: Are the project finances within the competition scope?

Team: Are the organisation / delivery team credible in this technical area?

HMGCC Co-Creation supporting information

HMGCC works with the national security community, UK government, academia, private sector partners and international allies to bring engineering ingenuity to the national security mission, creating tools and technologies that drive us ahead and help to protect the nation.

HMGCC Co-Creation is a partnership between HMGCC and Dstl (Defence Science and Technology Laboratory), created to deliver a new, bold and innovative way of working with the wider UK science and technology community. We bring together the best in class across industry, academia, and government, to work collaboratively on national security engineering challenges and accelerate innovation.

HMGCC Co-Creation is part of the NSTIx Co-Creation network, which enables the UK government national security community to collaborate on science, technology and innovation activities and to deliver these in partnership with a more diverse set of contributors for greater shared impact and pace.

HMGCC Co-Creation aims to work collaboratively with the successful solution providers by utilising in-house delivery managers working Agile by default. This process will involve access to HMGCC Co-Creation’s technical expertise and facilities to bring a product to market more effectively than traditional customer/supplier relationships.