More than most enterprises, government departments and those agencies charged with ensuring the security of the state, need to provide access to and share information with an increasing number of constituents, in order to operate effectively.
Current examples include the UK Government’s IT Strategy 'Transformational Government', which is to deliver citizen-centric services through a culture of shared services and the emphasis within the military to provide improved capability through the exploitation of network-centric warfare.
Achieving this information flow - whilst protecting data from falling into the wrong hands, ensuring both data and systems are uncompromised, and securing systems against malicious attack - is a constant challenge.
One of the main ways of meeting this challenge is through the development of secure portals and gateways.
What is a Secure Portal?
A secure portal is a mechanism which aggregates, integrates, personalizes, presents and communicates information, transactions and applications to the user, according to their level of authority, role and preferences.
More specifically, a secure portal:
- Supplies a robust and high-integrity service, ensuring that information presented is published by authorized users only
- Is available when necessary, meeting 24/7 operations if required, with heightened security configurations to reduce Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, and resilience to remove Single Point of Failure (SPoF)
- Has an appropriately secured configuration, to reduce the risks associated with allowing unauthorized entry to the internal network
- Brings together a collection of services and information
- Allows authorized users to receive personalized content
- Enables the authorized user to actively customize their own content and interface according to their own authorized needs
- Aims to provide a highly secure time and location-independent service
- Uses real-time monitoring to enable administrators to see the status and respond to performance bottlenecks and component failures
What is a Secure Gateway?
A secure gateway is a secure access point through which authorized users can access the information and services within the Portal.
- It uses an advanced configuration of firewalls, content scanners and VPN-layered technology, based on each organisation and their security assurance level
- It controls the flow of communication, facilitating necessary business transactions and blocking activity that could be malicious
- It monitors activities and access, enabling organisations to view historic access and activity
Nowhere are these developments in secure portals proving to be more important than in the vital information exchanges between national and international intelligence communities. VEGA provides significant technical advice to several military and public sector organisations on the provision of secure gateways and secure portals. In October 2005, VEGA began production of a secure facility to allow the flow of intelligence information between the UK and its allies.
The next few years will see the exploitation of information become more affordable and less of a technical challenge. Consequently, the need to protect this information will become more important. The need for secure gateways and secure portals will therefore increase.
VEGA is able to meet these challenges and provide protection for sensitive information while allowing the free flow of information as it needs to be shared.
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