Onclave Networks, Inc. Wins Actuator Award in Inaugural Smart City Works Innovation Challenge

    MCLEAN, VA, March 05, 2021 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Smart City Works, a nonprofit organization with a mission to harness the power of digital technology to create smart, sustainable, and resilient communities, in conjunction with Refraction, a dynamic coworking community serving the business leaders, creatives, and philanthropists of Northern Virginia sponsored the groundbreaking Smart City Challenge, 2021.

This regional challenge calls on innovators to come up with high-impact solutions to help cities grow across sectors like housing, broadband, education public safety, and urban infrastructure. The Smart City Challenge kicked off in late January with a month long hackathon and 49 teams. The challenge is hosted in partnership with Fairfax County, Girls in Tech DC, Virginia Center for Housing Research, Virginia Tech and The Universities at Shady Grove. The lineup of speakers/judges included US Senator Mark Warner, Dominion CEO Robert Blue, Fairfax County Chairman Jeff McKay, Clark Construction CFO Sameer Bhargava, DC CTO Lindsey Parker, and Cox VP Kathryn Falk.

"What the Smart City Challenge shows is that there is tremendous talent and innovation in Northern Virginia in the urban infrastructure space, that can have enormous impact on communities today," said Smart City Works cofounder David Heyman in a statement. "The digital transformation is taking root across every city and business today. We are excited to award the First Smart City Challenge Actuator Award and a position in Smart City Works Venture Labs' next business acceleration program to Onclave Networks, a company that is making a secure digital society possible."

"As a tech startup company, Onclave's team developed a national-grade security solution based on the methods and technology used by the Department of Defense (DoD) and U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) to protect communications related to U.S. National Security. Our solution addresses the innovation requirements of this challenge and meets the cybersecurity needs of Smart Cities across the nation," said Don Stroberg, CEO of Onclave. "We are honored to be recognized for our disruptive innovative solution designed to exponentially protect entire cities and their related facilities from cybersecurity breaches. Although being revolutionary comes with its own set of challenges in market adoption, our pilot projects speak for themselves and we will leverage our role in the Actuator program to achieve the mission of protecting additional smart cities in the next phase of our company's growth."

"The inaugural Smart City Challenge has proven that we have great innovative minds in our region working on the most pressing challenges in our communities," said Refraction CEO Esther Lee. "We were overwhelmed by the many creative and powerful solutions we received. We want to thank all of our partners, mentors, and judges for their hard work, commitment, and generosity. We would like to congratulate Refraction member, Onclave Networks, on their achievement winning the Actuator Award in the Smart City Challenge."

Continuing its support of Smart City initiatives, Onclave will be participating in the upcoming Smart Cities Connect Conference and Expo on April 13-14. For more details, visit: https://spring.smartcitiesconnect.org

About Smart City Challenge Organizers

Smart City Works is a nonprofit organization focused on solving urban challenges through innovation that fosters economic growth. As a catalyst for innovation, Smart City Works provides governments, organizations, and communities, technology innovation programs, and training to solve urban challenges and improve how we live and work in cities. Refraction is a nonprofit innovation hub that provides mentoring, programs and workspace to startups and high-growth companies. Together, they lead the Northern Virginia Smart Region Initiative, funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Working with partners, the Smart Region Initiative's goal is to help make Northern Virginia a hot spot for smart city innovation and economic growth.

Fairfax County is Virginia's largest county with 1.1 million residents and the home of eleven Fortune 500 companies and 8,700 technology companies benefiting from more than $3.2 billion in federal R&D investment last year. Girls in Tech DC is the regional chapter of the global nonprofit dedicated to eliminating the gender gap in technology and entrepreneurship. The Universities at Shady Grove offers 80 degree programs from nine Maryland public universities. Virginia Tech is the second largest public university in Virginia with a $522 million research portfolio.

About Onclave

Based in the Washington, D.C., area, Onclave Networks, Inc. is a global cybersecurity leader that specializes in securing operational technology (OT/IoT) through private networks. Onclave provides the first true Zero Trust secure communications platform that protects both legacy and new operational technologies from cyberattacks and other types of unauthorized access. Onclave makes trusted secure communications a standard for all by providing the fastest path to a more secure, simplified, and cost-effective alternative to today's solutions. For more information, visit: https://onclave.net

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