Enterprise Level Security

Mission success and effectiveness depends on timely, secured delivery of information to authorized personnel or systems. Unfortunately, the current security paradigm of building a fortress to protect systems in the network is not sufficient in cyberspace. Further access control measures, such as role-based permissions, to prevent intrusions/disruptions are also insufficient. We present an alternative mission-based approach to a more granular access control paradigm, based on 14 years of research and pilot efforts. This distributed security approach has no need for passwords or system accounts, thus eliminating the associated management overhead. At each step in the authorization process, the system determines validated identities and claims for appropriate access and privileges. The techniques employed are resilient, secure, extensible, and scalable. The system, called Enterprise Level Security (ELS), is currently being researched. This paper discusses the ELS, a web-based security architecture designed to select and incorporate technology into a cohesive set of policies and rules for an enterprise information system. ELS provides application and data level access control automatically, based on the warfighter's current mission profile. As the warfighter's profile changes, authorized accesses are automatically deleted and new ones established to provide relevant, least privileged, mission information at the time of need. The paper begins by introducing ELS, its design principles and architecture, along with its foundational role in developing a forward-looking enterprise baseline; then, it continues by presenting ELS' current status and performance metrics, along with future plans for expansion of capabilities.