Leviathan™ Technology FAQs

Introduction
Of all of the topics of discussion in the USA today “security” is one of the most frequently occurring. In this area “computer security” is on the top of the government’s and businesses’ agenda. The great concern is how to protect information so it can be used, viewed, preserved, and shared with total confidentiality.

The computer industry, to respond to this wide spread concern, has spent perhaps billions of dollars and tens of thousands of man years of effort on Research and Development, R&D, for products and techniques to provide information protection. Unfortunately, outside of what we have achieved, the computer industry has had little success and there is no promise that the industry in general will ever reach the goal they have set any time in the near future. To achieve what little success it has had for its special applications, the US Government has built a few “special systems” that can provide total information assurance. These systems allow the users to simultaneously handle classified (restricted access) information and public information and keep everything straight. The systems fulfill the Government’s needs but require special computer hardware and software and often a special facility. Such systems cost in the tens of thousands of dollars each.

Examples of where such units are being touted as viable solutions, are multi-level secure workstations, secure service provider stations, and trusted computing platforms. However, the cost per system alone has prevented all manufacturers from attempting to introduce them to the commercial marketplace. Therefore, the only hardware that is available now, and that will be available in the foreseeable future, are copies of these special systems built for or by the Government. This will remain true simply because, without a low price, there will never be a widespread demand for such products.

Attempts to produce a secure terminal using a low cost, commercial-off-the-shelf, COTS, computer system has, in all but one case, called for running special software either alone or with special security enhancement hardware add-ons. The industry has finally admitted that the software alone approach will never be a viable solution because the software cannot even reliably protect itself. Adding a hardware element, in the manner COTS computer systems allow, doesn’t improve the system information assurance capability enough to reach even the minimum level of acceptability.

Attempts to change the way the hardware element is added to a computer system in order to improve the system’s capability has, for the most part, necessitated a revision in the construction of the COTS product. Because this approach will, at the outset at least, increase the cost for the product, the demand to get the price down to the present COTS levels will not be there (and the system manufacturers don’t want to pick up the tab for the several years needed until the new versions become the standard approach).

There is, therefore, a large niche in the marketplace that remains un-served; and until it is served the R&D expenditures will continue and keep growing. To reverse that trend Communication Security Corporation, COMSC, has a successfully demonstrated and proven a technical solution for inexpensively converting COTS computer systems to produce high security systems. This approach is the only one that will ever satisfy both the technical model for a secure system and the marketing model for being able to use the COTS computer systems of today and tomorrow (without controlling what they look like). The approach will, for each computer design variation, take a computer from the low-cost COTS production and add a single, low-cost, multi-chip module that has the proper physical, electrical, mechanical and functional features. Adding the multi-chip module is done without modifying the system’s motherboard and without taking up one of the system’s expansion board mounting slots. (See the accompanying Leviathan Technology Description Sheet.)

The result then will satisfy both the large commercial demand for security at a low price and the lower Government demand for much higher, multi-level security.

This is illustrated in the following diagram: