Guarding critical data with hardware-based cybersecurity at the network edge

The state of data security

The world has more data than ever. With the rise of interconnected devices and move to software-based environments, the threat landscape continues to evolve and expand.

Buzz words such as “zero-trust security” are often used to describe methods of guarding data-at-rest, in-transit, and in-use.

But the question is, how do we handle this record amount of sensitive data in such a way that is both secure and easy to use?

Currently, many data security devices, like cross-domain solutions (CDS), for example, are software-based, increasing vulnerability to cyberattacks. These devices operate so slowly that they become almost restrictive, which can have life-threating consequences when being used for mission-critical applications.

Additionally, cybercriminals are looking to infiltrate a network during off times to reduce the likelihood of detection. This means that many cyberattacks may go unnoticed, putting sensitive data at risk.

As a result, military, DoD, and critical infrastructure personnel are looking towards solutions that not only provide high-speed, low-latency compute and networking, but also guard critical information and detect anomalies in network traffic in real-time.

Where does Trenton Systems come into play?

Trenton Systems is currently in the process of developing two fully validated, protected, and precise solutions to deliver hardware-based cybersecurity at the network edge.

Our hardware firewall cross-domain solution runs on Intel’s proprietary UPI bus at 10.4GT/s, and the CDS rules have only 400ns latency.

CPUs communicate to an FPGA via the UPI bus. The FPGA then dictates which traffic is allowed to communicate with other portions of memory—or, in some cases, with other virtual machines—isolating information based on how sensitive it is.

The FPGA can also isolate the different criticalities running on the CPUs, ensuring workloads do not interfere with one another and are secured from tampering or modification.

Our infrastructure processing unit (IPU) can remain undetected with lightning fast PTP timestamping down to 5ns precision to determine if someone has infiltrated the network.

It can sit in between networks as a CDS validation device to determine if a data packet was delivered correctly, or if a data packet took longer than anticipated to travel between the networks; it can also sit on a network as a “bump-in-the-wire” device to monitor traffic.

Data packets can be timestamped at lightning speed, and these packets can then be copied and taken off the network for analysis.

Closing thoughts

Though Trenton Systems is already doing a lot of the compute on our nation’s most sensitive networks, it’s only natural that we would come alongside our military, DoD, and critical infrastructure customers to help them protect the data traveling on and between these networks.

Designed and manufactured right here in the USA, we work directly with organizations like DARPA, Intel, and the Intelligence Community, as well as software solutions providers, to deliver fast, hardened, end-to-end solutions that securely process, analyze, store, and transfer massive amounts of data in a matter of seconds.

With cybersecurity across the hardware, firmware, software, and network stack, we also control the BIOS source code and only integrate components from an approved vendor list to ensure the operational integrity of our solutions.

While Trenton Systems’ CDS and IPU products are flexible and COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf), we understand that there are many security-sensitive customers that have unique applications.

To accommodate this, we can also take our core designs and work with customers to integrate our CDS and IPU products into their specific applications.

Our commitment to data security is unwavering. We are honored to be part of a collaborative effort to protect our nation’s most vital information, networks, and applications.

If you have any questions, or want to talk further, please don’t hesitate to reach out anytime.

I look forward to your thoughts.

#CDS #IPU #datasecurity #dataprotection #systemhardening

www.trentonsystems.com