N102-156 TITLE: Integrity and Authentication of Real-Time Data in Navy Combat Systems

TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Information Systems

ACQUISITION PROGRAM: Future Navy Combat System, Advanced Capability Build (ACB) 14/16/18

RESTRICTION ON PERFORMANCE BY FOREIGN CITIZENS (i.e., those holding non-U.S. Passports): This topic is "ITAR Restricted." The information and materials provided pursuant to or resulting from this topic are restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), 22 CFR Parts 120 - 130, which control the export of defense-related material and services, including the export of sensitive technical data. Foreign Citizens may perform work under an award resulting from this topic only if they hold the "Permanent Resident Card", or are designated as "Protected Individuals" as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3). If a proposal for this topic contains participation by a foreign citizen who is not in one of the above two categories, the proposal will be rejected.

OBJECTIVE: Develop the capability to authenticate, authorize, encrypt, key manage and audit publishers and subscribers in a real-time deadline scheduled pub/sub software environment on a per middleware message basis. We have a need for ensuring the producers and consumers of information used within a Navy surface combat system can be authenticated and trusted while preserving system performance requirements and data pedigree.

DESCRIPTION: In a publish/subscribe environment, robust capabilities are needed to (1) assure internal information pedigree, (2) preclude external data tampering/compromise and (3) ensure the producers and consumers of information can be authenticated and trusted.

Information assurance objectives include maintaining non-repudiation and data integrity for machine-to-machine, people-to-machine, and people-to-people data exchanges, such that all data producers and consumers are trusted. An open architecture methodology and information assurance design is needed to assure that the data has reached its intended recipient without data corruption. The desired capabilities should include a means to provide an auditable chain of custody for the data as it traverses data producers and consumers. This capability should include sender and receiver authentication, data integrity, and encryption. All features should be available in the pub/sub environment and be done on a per message/topic basis. There currently is not a capability to accomplish this in a real-time deadline scheduled environment. Current technologies only provide this capability for all messages and only in a point-to-point environment where both sender and receiver know each other and have a pre-existing trust model implemented. In a pub/sub environment, the sender is agnostic to the receiver and therefore no pre-existing trust models can be established. This SBIR needs to address this gap in capability in a true pub/sub environment.

These new capabilities must not adversely impact the existing system performance and real-time data delivery Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees of a distributed combat system, nor diminish the functionality of the system. It therefore is crucial that the developed technologies be lightweight and low-overhead in terms of processor, memory and network usage.

PHASE I: Analyze problem space, identify or define a set of specific information assurance technologies, develop initial concept design and deliver a plan of action for development of the set technologies that meet the need for real-time data provenance.

PHASE II: Develop, test and integrate the technologies identified in Phase I with a representative real-time surface Navy software system. Analyze performance impact of the developed technology.

PHASE III: Develop a set of products based on the work completed in Phase I and II and participate in their transition into Navy systems. These products should be standards based.

PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: The developed technology will have applications to any distributed computing software where it is important to establish trust between data producer and data consumer. This commercial dual-use will mitigate identity theft and enhance electronic banking and commerce.

REFERENCES:
1. Navy Open Architecture Computing Environment Design Guidance, August 23, 2004; http://www.nswc.navy.mil/TIE/OACE/docs/OACE_Design_Guidance_v1dot0_final.pdf

2. DDS: Data-Distribution Service for Real-Time Systems specification, version 1.2, http://www.omg.org/technology/documents/formal/data_distribution.htm

3. A New SOA Data-Provenance Framework; Tsai W.T. et al., Eight International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralized Systems (ISADS�07), IEEE 2007

4. "Towards Low Overhead Provenance Tracking in Near Real-Time Stream Filtering," Vijayakumar, N.N. and Plale, B., Provenance and Annotation of Data, 46-54, Springer 2006

KEYWORDS: data distribution, information assurance, provenance, real-time

** TOPIC AUTHOR (TPOC) **

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