High Performance Secure Shpboard Network for Wireless/Wired Connectivity

A need exists today in both military and commercial systems for low cost, high performance, secure information processing. Data-intensive communications systems and content-rich commercial wired and wireless products require secure data flow at increasing levels of throughput. Strategic military objectives as well as company-sensitive commercial applications necessitate a design and implementation process that thwarts the compromise of critical wireless information or data, following loss or capture of the system and its components. Both wired and wireless data flows will benefit from a well-planned architecture of security algorithms and data compression, resulting in high-speed communication within the system that is impervious to eavesdropping, external interference, and any other countermeasures short of destruction of the system. The well-planned architecture can withstand an adversary having knowledge of the security and compression algorithms being used, and even possession of the system hardware, yet still the adversary is unable to decode the data that is being securely transferred throughout the system or to reverse-engineer the critical components. Our proposal focuses on the development and optimization of a tamper-proof system that fully integrates advanced encryption, fine-tuned data compression, scalable key management, critical security parameter management, and a high speed standard interface for rapid integration with existing military and commercial systems. Phase I deliverables will serve as a blueprint for development of a state-of-the-art, comprehensive system for secure, reliable, tamper-proof, high-speed data communication. It will be applicable to both military and commercial environments where content-rich data is required to be transferred in a reliable, secure manner. It is expected to have wide application in areas such as Federal office buildings, DoD assets, Force Protection efforts, Homeland Security, operational forces, inter and intra ship communications, hospitals, emergency response centers, space stations, underground command bunkers, nuclear plants, and in other high-value industrial assets and processes. A successful approach will identify and solve the technical challenges faced in making the high-speed encryption/compression solution with advanced cryptographic key management mechanisms viable not only in a ruggedized, secure, tamper-proof solution for Navy shipboard, but also presented in a high-volume solution designed for commercial manufacturing.