Multiple Independent Levels of Security: The Changing Face of Range Information Management in the 21st Century

摘要

As the Global Information Grid becomes a reality, it is becoming less and less feasible to isolate a system under test, or a training participant, from the information-rich environment in which it operates. At issue is how Department of Defense ranges can effectively control and manage information across multiple access levels without compromising security, diminishing operational realism, or escalating the cost or complexity of effective range operations. Ranges have traditionally taken the 'system high' approach to data handling when multiple classification levels are involved, immediately classifying all data at the highest level of any data involved and requiring all participants to operate at that level. While such an approach mitigates the need for complex multiple security level processing, it can restrict the participation of systems and warfighters that cannot access data at the highest level. Seamlessly sharing data among participants with different clearance levels is clearly a high-priority goal of operational system and range infrastructure developers. The increased demand to train and fight with coalition partners, using a mixture of 'white-world' and highly classified weapons and information, has led the operational community to grapple with how to implement 'multiple independent levels of security' (MILS) to share data among warfighters possessing various clearance levels. The optimum approach to MILS is the implementation of Multilevel Security (MLS), in which a single processing device is designed to segment and route data to the appropriate end user at each node in the network. Chipsets and devices have been developed to facilitate a true MLS network topology, but accreditation of MLS systems has proven elusive, largely due to design costs and the intensive testing required to verify the fidelity of MLS devices. Due to the difficulty of implementing and accrediting MLS, many organizations have adopted a Multiple Security Levels (MSL) approach.