First deployed in 2013, E3A can identify and block known malicious traffic. According to Johnson the platform has blocked over 550,000 requests to access potentially malicious websites, he said. “These attempts are often associated with adversaries who are already on federal networks attempting to communicate with their ‘home base’ and steal data from agency networks,” Johnson added.

He further described E3A as a “platform for future technologies and capabilities to do more. This includes technology that will automatically identify suspicious Internet traffic for further inspection, even if we did not already know about the particular cybersecurity threat.”