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Storage Security

In January 2003 the Defense Department approved limited deployment of a database that will eventually store the records of more than 8.5 million military personnel and their families, letting military doctors retrieve medical histories, place orders, conduct research, and identify trends from stored records. Because this information is accessible anywhere in the world, patients would no longer need to carry medical records in paper format as they move from base to base.

However, this system presents significant technical and research challenges in terms of managing the volume of information that is stored and in terms of security and privacy. It must be available to a wide variety of users whose permissions might be granted or revoked dynamically and frequently. Security mechanisms need to be in place to guarantee the authenticity, integrity, and confidentiality of patient data both while being stored and while being communicated over a potentially public network. At the same time, however, access to life-critical data for the patient cannot be interrupted, even if the security infrastructure becomes inoperable. Patients and their medical professionals must continue to be able to access their medical records even if key servers crash. Data needs to be stored in such a way that both the secrecy and the resiliency are guaranteed and yet be available for rapid access across a widely distributed, potentially faulty network.

William Yurcik of NCSA and YuanYuan Zhou of UIUC are working to enable transparent, resilient, and robust access to critical data in the context of storage in a grid-computing environment. This will involve the following objectives:

  • building a perfectly secure and resilient distributed file system that functions reliably in a variety of adverse circumstances
  • developing a quantitative approach to building secure networks to enable portability and versatility
  • making secure sharing possible in a highly dynamic environment without creating a central authority to manage resource requests
  • freeing users from managing their own keys and they encryption and decryption of their files

Other military digital storage requirements include secure logistics storage, tactical communications systems retrieving stored maps and GPS data to coordinate troop movements, and handheld scanners (called interrogators) which track and store information about supplies and personnel. For example, the Standard Army Retail Supply System, Standard Army Maintenance System, and Standard Property Book System Review are three massive legacy supply and maintenance systems that are the basis for how the current military maintains itself on the battlefield. All these systems are in use during times of war and peace.