Information Assurance and Anti-Tamper System Level Protection for Unattended Network Nodes

McQ designs and develops remote unattended sensor systems for DoD and other applications. As part of our on-going research into anti-tamper, information assurance (AT/IA) and reverse engineering techniques, we have developed a battery of processes that can help to insure that our systems are less vulnerable to attacks by an adversary. Many of these processes are extensible to the GIG-NCES at-large. For this project we plan to extend much of what we have done already in the realm of opcode encryption, communication encryption, physical protection, device authentication, user authorization, automated tamper protection and other techniques to improve their performance and usability. We also plan to further explore a host of other areas with which we have experience and expertise such as system restoration. Because of our experience with unattended ground sensors, remote weather stations, roadside monitoring systems, remote acoustic monitoring systems and other networked automated remote monitoring systems, McQ brings “real world” perspective while using the latest in security and cryptographic technology to assist in the IA/AT challenge that is presented to GIG-NCES systems. Our goal is to ultimately demonstrate the features of a comprehensive IA/AT security plan and system design using our OmniSense® family of networked remote sensor systems.