ASSURACON: the ASSURed Atm CONnection

Development of a security device for assuring ATM communications from a trusted workstation is described in the context of a comprehensive workstation security solution. Patterned after a STU-III device that has evolved into a secure front-end for a trusted multimedia workstation, the ASSURACON design provides a low cost, high performance multi-level secure device that supports both secure and non-secure ATM streams. The emergence of ATM communications capability, the availability of CMW technology and the development of multimedia teleconferencing applications bring together opportunities for military system developers to impart communications assurance into CMW platforms that support multimedia teleconferencing. Advances in system engineering and exploitation of new operational paradigms are helping position the role of multimedia teleconferencing for the military user to support voice, video, file transfer, display export and related applications. This paper describes the development of a high performance cell stream security device that supports a comprehensive workstation security solution.