Additionally, SecureOffice's TCS Trusted Relabeler application enforces Defense's policy that any document must be reviewed twice before it's moved from one network domain to another. It routes documents to authorized individuals to gain their approval before a data transfer between networks takes place.
The Trusted Workstation combination of thin client and software has been deployed or is being tested at several of the Defense Department's nine Combatant Commands, including the Pacific Command, Joint Forces Command, European Command, Central Command, and Northern Command. Two others, the Strategic and Transportation commands, are scheduled to begin using the technology during the first quarter of 2005. The National Security Administration and the CIA also have expressed interest, Durante says.
The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's goal is to transition 20% of its desktops, which number between 25,000 and 30,000, to its Trusted Workstation program by Sept. 30, the end of the government's fiscal 2005 year, and have 80% online by the end of fiscal year 2007.
Trusted Workstations are expected to improve data sharing with U.S. allies as well. Pacific Command is the only Combatant Command sharing data with allied countries via Trusted Workstations, with the rest of the commands expected to exploit this capability next year. "International data sharing with allies exists, but it's not done very well at this point," Durante says. The Intelligence Information System typically maintains a separate network for each of its allies, and data has to be classified correctly so it's shared only with the appropriate allies.
Several companies are competing to deliver integrated data searching to analysts across various domains for data that's classified at different levels. "The goal is to create one desktop for accessing multiple classified and unclassified networks," says retired Maj. Gen. Howard Mitchell, CIO for thin-client maker Arrowhead Global Solutions Inc. and former director of operations for the U.S. Space Command. (The company didn't compete for the Department of Defense contract.) Arrowhead's Nytor thin clients use smart-card technology to authenticate user identification, just like Sun Ray systems. Its systems include Citrix MetaFrame presentation servers, Microsoft's public-key-infrastructure software, hardened Windows XP Embedded operating system, X.509 digital certificates, and VPN connections and are designed to appeal to government agencies that prefer Windows on the desktop. Citrix MetaFrame lets clients running Windows-based user interfaces interact with back-end Unix environments.
What hasn't happened yet is the ability to search all networks simultaneously through a single interface. That's true as well for The Homeland Secure Data Network, which was built by Northrop Grumman Corp. for the Department of Homeland Security and links with secure networks at other agencies, including the departments of Justice, State, and Energy. That network is based on multiprotocol label switching that tags data and lets administrators set up logical networks that can have different security levels (see "A Network Of Networks," April 19).
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