Office of Naval Research achieves Authority to Operate with Mobile Security Architecture
Office of Naval Research (ONR) recently announced that it achieved an Authority to Operate (ATO) for Mobile Security Architecture (MSA) for the United States Marine Corps. An ATO is the formal declaration that an Information System is approved to operate in a particular security mode using a prescribed set of safeguards. MSA is a Science and Technology (S&T) effort to research, design, test and accredit a lower-cost, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS)-based, National Security Agency (NSA) Suite B-enabled, non-Controlled Cryptographic Item (CCI) Wi-Fi "add-on" comms capability that extends tactical SIPRNet with reduced operational controls compared to traditional Type-1 (CCI) COMSEC. The implementation of MSA will allow greater efficiencies in COMSEC by not only reducing the cost of hardware as the move towards COTs continues, but also the number of devices will decrease, which will yield a secondary benefit in lower maintenance costs.
An ATO is the formal declaration that an Information System is approved to operate in a particular security mode using a prescribed set of safeguards.
ISPA Technology is proud to work alongside SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific (SSC PAC) in supporting the ONR's efforts on MSA. Our communications and network engineers have been working in concert with the engineering team at SSC PAC on this project for 3 years and we are pleased that our contributions to this effort in establishing baseline technical requirements and operational controls for these tactical communications systems have helped yield such positive results for ONR, said ISPA President Brian Bleeze. A key value to MSA is that it provides a secure network up to the secret level with less hardware than traditionally required. The success achieved by ONR's MSA program will yield improved security and increased speed of security mechanisms for users operating in intermittent and low bandwidth environments.