Scalability Study of Cryptographic Key Management System
NCASSR researchers are currently performing a scalability study of several information security tools. The tools may overcome the problems created when the Navy made several technical changes to its network environment. The changes involved moving from a circuit-switching communication fabric to a packet-switching fabric as well as changing local area networks and commercial-off-the-shelf workstations at command centers.

In circuit-switched networks, bits of information are shuttled to their destination in an orderly fashion along a single path—like a landline telephone call. A packet-switched network, however, breaks that information into parts. Each of the parts, or packets, contains the final destination's address, but they are directed on the fly. Each one can take a different route before being recompiled into the original message at the end.

Despite these changes, however, the communications security devices that were developed under the old technology requirements continued to be used to protect information transport into and out of the centers. As a result, the ability to separate and protect information on a need-to-know basis was lost. That inability to protect information based on classification is of considerable concern because insider threats are a big potential vulnerability to the lives of our military personnel and our national security.

In this project, NCASSR staff will study information centric security (INFOCENSEC™) and public key infrastructure (PKI). They will focus on scalability for secure information-sharing requirements in coalition forces. The goal is to find a system for key management that will support the protection of information based on classification.
 
Project Leads
Jerry Kimmel, NCSA
Frank Adamouski, NCSA
Ersin Domangue, NCSA
Len Viola, NCSA

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The National Center for Advanced Secure Systems Research NCASSR) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is a multi-institutional cybersecurity research team. NCASSR focuses basic and applied research necessary to develop next generation information security technologies that address national cybersecurity needs. NCASSR is led by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and supported by funding from the Office of Naval Research (ONR).


SELS 0.7 released
Secure Email List Services (SELS) is an open source software for creating and developing secure email list services among user communities.
 
Strong community engagement strengthens cybersecurity research and development
NCASSR-supported exploratory research at NCSA and elsewhere has sparked additional external funding and development opportunities as well as successful deployment and adoption by users ranging from the defense sector to state law enforcement to the utilities industry.
 
NCASSR Collaborator Goes To Washington
Carl Gunter, a professor in the University of Illinois Department of Computer Science and a project lead on NCASSR-supported work involving adaptive, secure messaging, recently spoke to an audience of congressional staffers and lobbyists on Capitol Hill regarding ways to address a variety of critical cybersecurity issues in areas such as healthcare and energy distribution.