Johns Hopkins APL Named a Fast Company Most Innovative Company for 2026

The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, has been named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2026, ranking 13 in the Security category for developing cybersecurity tools to protect industrial control systems that power essential services such as electricity, water, and transportation.

“This recognition highlights the urgency and importance of securing the infrastructure support systems and networks that our nation depends upon every day,” said APL Director Dave Van Wie. “In close collaboration with government and industry, APL’s researchers focused on delivering practical, scalable cybersecurity solutions. These are real-world tools that help operators detect and respond to threats in real time, strengthening the resilience of both civilian and defense infrastructure.”

Fast Company’s annual list recognizes organizations worldwide that are driving meaningful innovation across more than 50 industries, highlighting those that are setting new standards and shaping the future through creative problem-solving and real-world impact. The Security category focuses on cutting-edge technologies that are keeping people and companies safe from digital warfare, underscoring the growing importance of cybersecurity and resilient infrastructure amid an increasingly complex global threat environment.

APL was selected for its development of Behavioral Alerting Sets for Control Systems (BAS/CS), an analytic framework for detecting cyber threats to industrial control systems. BAS/CS standardizes and correlates alerts generated by multiple tools, dramatically reducing false alarms and analyst workload. It operates within the APL-developed More Situational Awareness for Industrial Control Systems (MOSAICS) framework, which integrates data across diverse security tools as well as legacy and developing technologies to support tailored cyber defenses for complex control systems. Together, these capabilities enhance situational awareness and enable faster, more coordinated responses to increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. They are currently employed worldwide to support the defense of ashore U.S. Navy control systems.

“Industrial control system cybersecurity often relies on isolated point solutions that don’t communicate well across complex environments,” said Ray Yuan, APL’s Cyber Operations Mission Area executive. “MOSAICS changes that by providing an integrated framework that brings diverse control systems, tools, and data streams into a unified defensive architecture, and BAS/CS builds within that framework to ensure activity is interpreted consistently across those environments, enabling a more cohesive and scalable approach to defense.”

This is APL’s sixth appearance on a Fast Company Most Innovative Companies list. The Lab made the list in 2016 for leading DARPA’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics program, as well as in 2018, 2020, and 2022, for the Parker Solar Probe, Dragonfly, and Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) space missions, respectively. The Lab appeared twice on the 2024 list for its biothreat characterization and AI-accelerated modeling tools.