Focus on protecting the nation’s critical infrastructures has led to increasing concern about gaps in industrial control systems that monitor and collect data, such as electric power grids or oil and gas pipelines. To alleviate that concern, 11 of the 66 small-business research grants awarded two months ago by the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency dealt with developing new technologies to secure supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. Starthis Inc., a software firm based in Arlington Heights, Ill., is one of those small businesses working on advanced SCADA technologies and the only one integrating security features into the Java 2 Enterprise Edition platform. Full Story