Mindlink partners with Everfox for classified networks comms

MindLink has partnered with Everfox to integrate Mindlink’s messaging platform with Everfox’s High Speed Verifier Cross Domain Solution. The integration allows users on differently classified networks to collaborate in real time while maintaining the security between them. Coalition partners, agencies and government departments frequently work on separate networks with different classification rules. This forces operators to switch between terminals to follow a single situation, known as “swivel chairing,” and file-based transfer cannot keep pace with live operations. Information can be withheld because moving it is too risky. With this new partnership, authorised users on a higher classification network can now join MindLink chat rooms created on a lower classification network. MindLink’s data centric security engine, which is designed to handle classification labels up to TOP SECRET, controls what each user can see and what can be released across the boundary, based on classification labels, data attributes and user entitlements, while Everfox provides the secure bridge between the networks. Automated label checking blocks messages containing restricted classifications or sensitive codenames before they leave the source network. Data can flow one way or both, depending on the mission. Luke Terry, CTO at MindLink, said, “Classification boundaries have made it hard for coalition and interagency teams to share information at operational speed. With Everfox, we apply security controls to the data itself and verify it in hardware as it crosses the domain boundary, so teams on different networks can work together in real time without compromising security.” Real-time messaging is sensitive to latency, so verification has to keep pace. With the Everfox High Speed Verifier, each message is converted into an Everfox Verifiable Data Structure and validated at high throughput rates and at line speed using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) Hardsec technology, which enforces security in hardware logic, reducing the potential attack surface of the solution. This provides both a protocol break and a data break, designed to help protect against cyberattacks leveraging either the protocol or the message content. Colin McKinty, Managing Director of Everfox International, said, “Data transfer in high-consequence environments needs to occur at mission speed while maintaining high assurance. That is what our High Speed Verifier is built for, and together with MindLink, we are bringing it to live collaboration across classification boundaries.” The integration uses FRNIX, MindLink’s federation protocol developed through the UK Defence and Security Accelerator, to meet the Intelligence community’s requirements. FRNIX exchanges data between partner networks over air-gapped hardware, and its multi-classification information sharing, or High to Low and Low to High model, keeps each organisation in control of where sensitive data is held. In line with Zero Trust principles, access is never assumed because of which network a user sits on. The need to collaborate across security domains extends beyond Five Eyes and NATO defence. MindLink and Everfox are exploring use in central government, policing, the defence supply chain and highly regulated commercial sectors. For Editorial Inquiries Contact: Editor Kym Bergmann at [email protected] For Advertising Inquiries Contact: Group Sales Director Simon Hadfield at [email protected]