Building a Bridge across the Transition Chasm

Best practices for transitioning commercially funded research to operational environments don't always apply to government-funded cybersecurity endeavors due to constraints imposed by government regulations, certifications, and funding cycles. Most approaches for crossing this "valley of death" have been offered from the perspective of government sponsors and acquisition authorities. This article offers the perspective of an R&D team that has transitioned three cybersecurity situation awareness technologies from early research to installations in the US Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense. The authors describe the techniques they used to build a bridge across the transition chasm.