New Wireless Technology for defence
As defense agencies grapple with the knotty technical problems posed by wireless systems, new security certifications are clearing the way for them to take greater advantage of these increasingly ubiquitous technologies.
The enterprise mobility business of Motorola, for example, recently announced that its flagship, enterprise-class RFS7000 RF Switch and WS5100 Wireless Switch have satisfied Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) pre-validation requirements and have been placed on the FIPS 140-2 pre-validation list. Motorola’s RFS7000 RF Switch and WS5100 Wireless Switch products also entered the Common Criteria evaluation process at the Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 4 (EAL4), currently the highest level for compliance with the U.S. government Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) Access System Protection Profile for Basic Robustness Environments.
According to the company, the Motorola wireless switches are currently the only wireless/RF switch products undergoing the Common Criteria evaluation at the EAL4 with the specified U.S. government protection profile for basic robustness environments.
The development should be a boon to military and other government offices, according to Kevin Goulet, senior director, product marketing for Motorola’s Enterprise WLAN Division.
“The real benefit is that many federal agencies that require strict certification have been very slow in, or even prevented from, deploying wireless in business needs that actually beg for wireless,” Goulet said. “Now with this level of compliance, government agencies that haven’t been able to are now able to rethink their next-generation networks.
“As opposed to having locked-down wired networking, they now have the opportunity to think outside the box and figure out how wireless mobility can enable them to do their business more efficiently and get their people closer to the information to make decisions. We’re now going to enable groups that before didn’t have the opportunity to think about wireless to start designing networks that will really improve their efficiency,” he continued.
The Department of Defense requires that COTS WLAN systems incorporate the toughest security measures to protect the integrity of voice and data traffic traveling across the wireless network, and meet the requirements of FIPS 140-2 and the Common Criteria, including the WLAN Access System Protection Profile requirements. DoD also mandates the use of continuous wireless intrusion protection measures for tracking the location of thousands of wireless clients in real-time.
Motorola is one of the few vendors to offer advanced forensics reporting that provides visibility into incidents that may have occurred weeks or months earlier to help identify and correct wireless security vulnerabilities.
Motorola Enterprise WLAN equipment can help secure data all the way from client device to the application without additional investment in additional hardware or modules. At the point of data exchange with the wireless client device, Motorola uses the IEEE 802.11i wireless security standard, which provides data authentication and encryption using the AES-CCM crypto-graphic algorithm.
The recent action also represents an important step for Motorola, which acquired Symbol Technologies earlier this year to be the core of Motorola’s enterprise mobility business.
“With the Symbol acquisition, we’ve greatly beefed up our overall portfolio of products for the enterprise, since Symbol was clearly a market leader in the businesses they were in,” Goulet said. “When you think about Motorola and Symbol coming together, Motorola has a storied history in government business. We sell a significant amount of products and services to federal, state and local governments, from fire and police to the Department of Defense. We’ve got a long relationship there. So as you look at the products that Symbol brought to the table, one was wireless, which was an area that Motorola historically had not been in. So we’ve done a lot of work to make sure that these products can meet the needs not only of corporate customers, but also of Motorola’s government customers.”
Motorola’s RFS7000 RF Switch and WS5100 Wireless Switch are part of its end-to-end enterprise WLAN product suite, enabling enterprise mobility indoors. Products in the Enterprise WLAN portfolio include thin, full-function and mobile mesh access points, wireless switches and RF switches that can manage up to 3,000 access points.
In addition to Wi-Fi hardware, Enterprise WLAN is part of Motorola’s MOTOwi4 portfolio of innovative wireless broadband solutions and services that complement and complete IP networks. Delivering IP coverage to virtually all spaces both indoors and outdoors, the MOTOwi4 portfolio includes fixed broadband, mesh, broadband over powerline, WiMAX and Enterprise WLAN solutions for private and public networks.
Motorola said it expects to receive final FIPS 140-2 and Common Criteria EAL4 validation next year.
