A word of advice: If you’re “Friends” with your boss on Facebook, don’t post pictures of your wild Thursday night and call in “sick” on Friday. And if you just can’t help but upload that selfie with a margarita in hand, at least be selective about who can view that particular Facebook status. The folks at Facebook know that there is information that is OK for everyone to see and that there is information that should only be in the hands of certain people. That’s why they have cleverly devised a way to designate who sees certain status updates – so the wrong information doesn’t get into the hands of the wrong people.
At GEOINT 2016, one of the key topics addressed by Director of the National Geospatial Agency, Robert Cardillo was the need for multi-level security access to unclassified, classified and top secret information. While the stakes are a little bit higher with national security than they are with Facebook, the fundamentals are similar. Connect the right people with the right information and keep it out of the hands of the wrong people.
Fortunately, the people at ViON, Seagate and Lockheed Martin have developed a solution for security applications that can quickly and efficiently provide appropriate access to information stored on a single platform, based upon user authentication levels. MLS-e, or Multi-Level Secure Ecosystem is a high performance compute solution that enables to the storing, distribution and access of data at multiple security levels. Simply put, unclassified and classified data can now be stored on a single array, with access to information being determined by user authentication levels. What this means to the analyst and those making decisions is faster access to information through indexing, querying and retrieval of sensitive information.
Traditional methods of segmenting information into independent siloes based upon classification level impede the flow of information and require far more resources to maintain. With MLS-e, users are able to increase the speed of data flow, increase the level of security, reduce costs and simplify management. The fusion of data from multiple sources, regardless of classification level is allowing for faster and more sophisticated analytics.
Will MLS-e protect you from your incriminating margarita induced Facebook selfie? Nope. You’re on your own on that one. But will it give those responsible for protecting our national security another arrow in the quiver to make informed decisions? Absolutely.
Want to learn more about MLS-e? Stop by and see us DI2E Plugfest June 1-2, 2016 at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. Or if you want to get all the details right now, check out our MLS-e White Paper.