|
By Mel Duvall
IBM is working with the U.S. Air Force to design and demonstrate a secure cloud computing network that would be capable of supporting the military's defense and intelligence networks.
The company announced it has been awarded a 10-month project during which it will introduce advanced cyber security and analytics technologies developed by IBM Research. The project will test the boundaries of cloud computing technology to not only support large-scale networks, but also meet rigorous security standards.
The Air Force's network manages the operations of nine major commands, nearly 100 bases, and 700,000 active military personnel around the world.
"Our goal is to demonstrate how cloud computing can be a tool to enable our Air Force to manage, monitor and secure the information flowing through our network," Air Force Lieutenant General William Lord said in a statement. Lord also serves as chief information officer and chief of warfighting integration for the Air Force.
IBM said its researchers, software architects, analytics specialists and cyber security experts will work with the Air Force to demonstrate how "an unprecedented level of security and network resiliency" can be built into the cloud infrastructure. It said advanced stream computing analytics would be a key design component.
The technology will be coupled with sensors, monitors and other detection devices to enable the Air Force to analyze massive amounts of data flowing through its network and obtain actionable insights about possible threats, such as cyber attacks and network, system or application failures.
The design will incorporate executive-level dashboards, which will be used to deliver real-time status reports on the health and performance of the network. IBM said the dashboards can be used, for example, by the Air Force to automatically take security steps based on a rules-based protocol in the event of a cyber attack or network anomaly.
Autonomic computing, which allows cloud services to be self-managed, will also be built into the design.
The Air Force project follows on the heels of calls by the Obama administration to make more extensive use of cloud computing in the federal government as a means to reduce costs and improve IT efficiency. Proponents of cloud computing say the network model strengthens the resiliency of mission-critical applications by removing dependency on underlying hardware. Applications can be easily moved from one system to another in the event of a system failure or attacks.
Security has been a concern, however, which stresses the importance of proving the model in a military setting.
Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register. |
