15:20 - 15:55   Paper 6

High Robustness Network Communications for the Multiple Independent Levels of Security/Safety (MILS) Architecture

Joseph M. Jacob, Senior Vice President of Objective Interface Systems, Inc

The Multiple Independent Levels of Security/Safety (MILS) architecture addresses safety and security requirements in embedded systems. Based on a small separation kernel, MILS greatly reduces the amount of privileged separation enforcement code. By providing extremely robust Data Isolation and Control of Information Flow, MILS layers system protection among a kernel, middleware, and applications. The greatly reduced amount of security-critical code makes it practical to mathematically prove that all policy enforcement is Non-bypassable, Evaluatable, Always-Invoked, and Tamperproof (NEAT). MILS also enables application developers to implement their own security policies and be guaranteed their own protections are also NEAT.

The Partitioning Communications System (PCS) is MILS middleware architecture that extends the separation kernel's policy enforcement to distributed systems. The PCS provides strong authentication, trustworthy separation of data by safety/sensitivity level and community of interest, secure network configuration, secure loading, and secure clock synchronization for covert channel suppression. The PCS architecture works with all network protocols and media and is not restricted to IP tunneling.