Technologies for the 21st Century High Confidence Systems

	Overview INFOSEC Secure operating system development program GRiDS: Intrusion Detection SAW: Secure Access Wrapper TBA: Task-Based Authorization Secure All-Optical Networking Network infrastructure and security Protecting privacy for medical records Reliable information
Overview	HCS R&D focuses on the critical technologies necessary to achieve high levels of security, protection, availability, reliability, and restorability of information services. Systems that employ these technologies will be resistant to component failure and malicious manipulation and will respond to damage or perceived threat by adaptation or reconfiguration.   High confidence technologies can be applied to any element of a system, including: system reliability -- for example, management of networks under load, failure, or intrusion; emergency response; firewalls; secure enclaves; and formal methods security and privacy, including personal identification, access control, authentication, encryption and other privacy assurance techniques, public key infrastructures, and trusted agents for secure distributed computing testing and evaluation Applications requiring HCS technologies include national security, law enforcement, life- and safety-critical systems, personal privacy, and the protection of critical elements of the National Information Infrastructure (NII). Systems for power generation and distribution, banking, telecommunications, medical implants, automated surgical assistants, and transportation also need reliable computing and telecommunication technologies.   Through their HCS R&D, Federal agencies collaborate in developing network and systems security and reliability and provide mechanisms for cooperation with the private sector. FY 1997 accomplishments and FY 1998 plans are presented in this section.
INFOSEC	The NSA information systems security (INFOSEC) mission provides leadership, products, and services to protect classified and unclassified national security systems against exploitation due to interception, unauthorized access, or related technical intelligence threats. All INFOSEC research activities of NSA and DARPA are reviewed and coordinated by the Joint Technology Office (JTO). The JTO leverages DARPA's work in cutting edge technologies, including network technologies, while allowing DARPA to use NSA security expertise in developing advanced information technologies.
Secure operating system development program	NSA's ongoing secure operating system development program is evaluating methods to assure authenticated network transactions, data integrity, and non-exploitation of transactions across the Defense Information Infrastructure. NSA is also conducting research to support an evolving suite of information security services to help customers implement security technology, and is conducting research in standards for secure interoperability of nonhomogeneous computer and telecommunications systems. Robust secure network management techniques that allow a network to be managed without fear of malicious denial-of-service attacks, such as flooding, corruption of data, or falsified identification of nodes or users, will be developed.
GRiDS: Intrusion Detection	DARPA supports research at the University of California at Davis to develop the Graph-based Intrusion Detection System (GrIDS) of instrumented network services. GrIDS consists of routers, network file servers, domain name systems, communications protocols, and host workstations that detect and trace intrusions. GrIDS first collects data on computers and the network traffic among them, then reports a possible anomaly when the graph-patterns exceed a user-specified threshold. By learning about the vulnerabilities, attacks, and countermeasures relevant to all-optical network technologies and architectures, GRiDS will provide both a foundation for designing network defenses and an understanding of the means available to attack an adversary's network.
SAW: Secure Access Wrapper	Databases are ubiquitous in distributed military and commercial network infrastructures, and many are subject to stringent security requirements. The objective of the DARPA-supported Secure Access Wrapper (SAW) project is to develop a SAW for securing access to commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) and legacy databases in very large-scale information systems. The SAW generates database wrappers for security consistent with the security policy of the underlying database. Moreover, databases wrapped by SAWs can be composed systematically to form secure systems. The SAW will consist of an automated tool kit addressing local and global issues in securing access.
TBA: Task-Based Authorization	DARPA's Task-Based Authorization (TBA), a new paradigm for access control, is particularly suited for distributed computing and information processing with multiple points of access, control, and decision making. TBA articulates security issues at the application and enterprise level by taking a task-oriented or transaction-oriented perspective instead of a traditional subject-object view of access control. TBA applicability ranges from access control for client-server interactions in a distributed system, to distributed applications and workflows that cross departmental and organizational boundaries.
Secure All-Optical Networking	The DARPA-funded Secure All-Optical Networking project will investigate techniques to increase the security of all-optical networks against service denial, eavesdropping, traffic analysis, and unauthorized access at a level equal to or greater than the current generation of electro-optical networks. The program focus includes: (1) secure architectures for all-optical networks, (2) understanding and countering optical network component vulnerabilities, and (3) developing concepts for attack-resistant network control and management algorithms. Through understanding the vulnerabilities, attacks, and countermeasures relevant to all-optical network technologies and architectures, the project will provide both a foundation for designing network defenses and an understanding of the means available to attack an adversary's network.
Network infrastructure and security	HCS R&D supported by NSF and DARPA is developing access control mechanisms that can be layered over existing operating systems. These mechanisms are able to enforce a variety of security policies and can be customized for the varied needs of many sectors, such as financial, business, health care, and defense. Using a simple language, a system administrator can specify an organization's policy in terms of groups of users and objects. This policy is automatically translated into low-level permissions on files and other resources. Integrating these access control mechanisms into firewalls will enable more intelligent filtering of traffic exchanged between a local area network and the Internet. Security policies can be registered with a remote policy server, which can be queried by firewalls, to allow the firewalls to make more intelligent filtering decisions.
Protecting privacy for medical records	NLM and Veterans Administration (VA) support research in technologies for storing and transmitting patients' medical records while protecting the accuracy and privacy of those records. FY 1997 and 1998 projects will promote the application of HCS technologies to health care, telemedicine evaluation, and the testing of methods for protecting the privacy of electronic health data. R&D for computer-based patient records and public health applications of the NII will also be emphasized.
Reliable information	HCS R&D at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) focuses on two areas. Research in the NIST Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory (MEL) is concerned with reliable information exchange among manufacturing applications. This standards-based effort for computer integrated manufacturing examines product/process design, manufacturing engineering, and production system control within and across the enterprise. Reliable mechanisms for testing manufacturing application integration solutions will be developed. Current NIST efforts are described more fully in the CIC R&D Highlights section of this report.   Through the Computer Security Division of its Information Technology Laboratory, NIST is working with industry and government on standards and test methods for cryptographic modules, test methods for security products and systems, development of infrastructure for public key based security, and common architectures that promote use of strong authentication technologies.