Several Secure Store and Forward Devices

DoD system high enclaves are often isolated from systems at other security levels because the usual connectors (guards) are expensive to procure, integrate, accredit, and operate, and usually require a human in the middle to review the data flow, independent of direction. This isolation reduces the effectiveness of information systems. The secure store and forward devices described in this paper can be used to solve an important (yet tractable) half of the problem: moving data from LOW to HIGH without a human in the middle. These devices were expressly designed to be easy to accredit. Security critical function is both minimized and separated from non-security critical function to reduce the need for trusted components. A prototype implementation of one of these store and forward devices is described as well. Published in the Proceedings of the 3rd ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Conference on Computer and Communications Security p129-137, Mar 1996.