It's almost impossible to build the most secure system. There's nothing you can do if someone or a group wants to launch a cyber attack on you. It is a continuing problem.

The Pentagon continues to struggle with that, and DARPA is ready to find a solution. The agency just announced a competition to build a "fully automated cyber defense system". They will pay a total of $2 million to the grand prize winner.

The Cyber Grand Challenge will take place over the next three years, which gives some really smart people a lot of time to write code. DARPA is not just asking for any type of old cyber defense system, they want one "with reasoning abilities exceeding those of human experts" that "will create its own knowledge."

The system should be able to deflect cyberattacks in a matter of hours or even seconds.

The Cyber Grand Challenge is actually modeled after the 2004 competition to build a self-driving car. Though none of the cars even finished the seven-mile course that year, the Stanford team that won the following year went on to build Google's famous self-driving car.

[DARPA via Forbes]