News article written by Corbett Communications. The statements made or opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Engineers Australia.
The United States’ Defense Advance Projects Research Agency (DARPA) has announced a new program - Secure Handhelds on Assured Resilient networks at the tactical Edge (SHARE) - that will benefit troops in remote regions and reduce the need for multiple laptops and handheld devices for accessing various levels of classified information.
At present, this is a problem where time is critical. The usual process for sharing such information, DARPA said, requires an end-to-end connection to secure services via a dedicated digital ‘pipe’ approved for the specific security level of data to be transmitted. If the tactical network is overloaded or if a glitch causes a break in the digital chain, the message or data is typically lost and the process has to be repeated until the connection is completed. This potentially hinders missions in fast-moving tactical situations. Making things even harder is that current computers and infrastructure needed to manage multiple levels of classified and allied information are too bulky for tactical use in the field and can take months to deploy.
The SHARE program is expected to create a system where information at multiple levels of security classification can be processed on a single handheld Android device using a resilient secure network linking devices without routing traffic through secure data centres. It will be able to operate over existing commercial and military networks while maintaining the security of sensitive information and safety of operations.
“The vision of SHARE is to develop software that moves the multilevel security management function from a handful of data centres down to trusted, handheld devices on the tactical edge,” DARPA program manager Joe Evans said.
To this end, the program is focused on three areas: technologies and policy tools for distributed tactical security management on handheld devices; networking technologies based on resilient and secure architectures that work in challenging environments; and software that rapidly configures security across the network. The aim is to demonstrate secure exchange of information at multiple levels of classification over existing commercial hand-held devices like smartphones and tablets and unsecured military and commercial networks like Wi-Fi and cellular, using a heterogeneous mix of devices.
“Specifically, SHARE will secure tactical mobile handheld devices to support distributed multilevel information sharing without the need for reaching back to large-scale fixed infrastructure, create new networks based on resilient and secure architectures that work in challenging environments, and develop software that rapidly configures security across the network,” program information stated.
SHARE is a three phase effort that will initially develop and mature relevant networking and security technologies, then develop a prototype on a mobile device, and finally integrate and demonstrate the capability in a coalition demonstration or exercise. In each phase, research and development will be performed across two focus areas:
Focus Area 1 – Distributed Tactical Security Management: Develop technologies and policy tools, integrated onto handheld devices to share information between trusted groups, and develop a secure multilevel operating system and distributed application security framework for mobile handheld devices, (e.g. Android tablets and smartphones), suitable for use in a tactical environment.
Focus Area 2 – Resilient Secure Networks: Develop new networking technologies that inherently support the ability to exchange information at multiple security levels and provide resilient secure store and forward capabilities rather than brittle end-to-end connections, and adapt existing applications that have been designed for current networking technologies to use these new networking approaches.
Author: Desi Corbett