Prometheus Security Group Global and Zignal Labs Selected for AFWERX SBIR Phase I Award
AUSTIN, Texas and SAN FRANCISCO, California, Sept. 28, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Prometheus Security Group Global (PSG) and Zignal Labs announce that they have been selected by AFWERX for a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I contract in the amount of $74,292, focused on evaluating the feasibility of integrating PSG’s portable Zero Trust physical security technology stack with Zignal Labs’ open source intelligence capabilities to address the most pressing challenges in the Department of the Air Force (DAF).
The proposed approach brings together, in a portable package, PSG’s critical infrastructure systems, built on a modular open systems approach for detecting, authenticating and communicating physical security events, including hardware-rooted device authentication that verifies events at their source, with Zignal’s multi-modal collection, enrichment, and alerting capabilities, transforming fragmented open source information into structured, contextualized intelligence. The Phase I effort will explore how these complementary, dual-use capabilities can provide security forces with earlier warning and greater operational context.
The Air Force Research Laboratory and AFWERX have partnered to streamline the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) process by accelerating the small business experience through faster proposal to award timelines, changing the pool of potential applicants by expanding opportunities to small business and eliminating bureaucratic overhead by continually implementing process improvement changes in contract execution. The DAF began offering the Open Topic SBIR/STTR program in 2018, which expanded the range of innovations the DAF funded and now, Prometheus Security Group Global and Zignal Labs will start their journey to create and provide innovative capabilities that will strengthen the national defense of the United States of America.
"Force protection is a standoff problem, and everything we've built for fifty years buys standoff in meters," said Thomas E. Segars Jr., Director of Strategic Security Programs at PSG and a retired U.S. Air Force colonel. "This effort allows us to explore how we buy standoff in time, from a domain with no fence line. Fusing trusted detection at the resource with indicators across the open information environment means the protection envelope no longer ends where the installation or resource does. That matters most where we have the least terrain but need to launch sorties—dispersed, expeditionary locations."
“The indicators which precede a threat often emerge well beyond the physical perimeter. This Phase I effort will evaluate how fusing open source intelligence together with physical security sensor data can give security forces a more complete operational picture of activity developing around mission-defined areas of interest,” said Chad Lawson, SVP of Revenue and Strategic Partnerships at Zignal Labs and retired MSG, USASOC. “The goal is to extend the warning window, reduce noise, and give security forces more time and context to act across both garrison and deployed missions.”
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Air Force, the Department of War, or the U.S. government.
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