The Trustworthy Resilient Universal Secure Infrastructure Platform (TruSIP)

The call for trustworthy and dependable (ICT and ICS) computing

In May 2009, the United States' President Barack Obama ordered a 60-day cyberspace policy review.  The project was headed up by Melissa Hathaway.  The subsequent Report identified the need and called for trustworthy and dependable computing infrastructure.  This explicitly included traditional Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems as well as Industrial Control Systems (ICS).  The Report has been a catalyst for wide ranging cyber security initiatives in the USA, including the January 2011 Department of Homeland Security Broad Agency Announcement (BAA 11-02).

Synaptic Labs’ Trustworthy Resilient Universal Secure Infrastructure Platform (TruSIP) is a direct response to the above calls and several project development white-papers have been submitted into that BAA 11-02 call. Specifically TruSIP proposes a trustworthy and dependable computing platform suitable that addresses the currently open hard security limitations of today's IT and ICS designs in one unified platform.

The TruSIP Proposal

The Trustworthy Resilient Universal Secure Infrastructure Platform (TruSIP) is our proposal to create a universally trustworthy and dependable computing platform suitable for hosting mission critical operations.  Our platform will uniformly deliver unprecedented confidentiality, integrity, availability, reliability, safety and authenticity assurances for all stakeholders against continuous and evolving insider and outsider attacks (i.e. all malicious actors), in a way that is credible and can be audited.  Furthermore our platform should facilitate business continuity in the face of natural or man made physical disasters.

TruSIP offers advanced information assurance controls against covert storage channel attacks, covert timing channel attacks and a wide range of side-channel attacks including cache-timing attacks mounted by both outsiders and privileged insiders.  Privileged insiders explicitly include the TruSIP deployment's technical and managerial staff, as well as all insiders involved in design, implementation and maintenance of the components used in that cloud deployment.

TruSIP (on it's own or in combination with other ICT Gozo Malta projects) is intended to address 6 of the 8 current hardest and most critical challenges (Global-scale IdM, Insider Threat, Availability of Time-Critical Systems, Building Scalable Secure Systems, Situational Understanding, Security with Privacy) identified by the United States Department of Homeland Security in their November 2009 Cyber Security Roadmap.  The DHS report says these core challenges must be addressed if trustworthy systems envisioned by the U.S. Government are to be built.

The TruSIP Proposal is 10+ million times more efficient than our nearest competitor

Our proposal is over 10+ million times faster than our nearest competitor, IBM's Fully Homomorphic Encryption (2011).  IBM's Fully Homomorphic Encryption will receive USD 20 million research over 5 years by the U.S. Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency with the goal of reducing it from 10+ million times slower down to 100,000x slower than unencrypted computation.

By way of comparison, TruSIP's commercially relevant performance is estimated at only 2.5x - 3.5x slower than unencrypted computation.

TruSIP Projects Road Map and Proposal Pages

Synaptic Laboratories and the Gozo Business Chamber (EU) have co-founded the ICT Gozo Malta cluster of excellence. This CoE will work in close collaboration with key Government and private stakeholders and leading International companies to develop Synaptic Labs' range of TruSIP project proposals (link to graphical projects map illustration):