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   Publication: The Age
   Publication date: 2-2-1999
   Edition: Late
   Page no: 9
   Section: Computers
   Sub section: It Professional
   Length: 706
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Starlight closes the `Air gap'

IT ONE - SECURITY - AWARD

Byline: SUELETTE DREYFUS

MILITARY agencies have battled with the problem for decades; how to
create a system which lets staff simultaneously use both classified
and unclassified networks all on the same computer. Their search has
just come to an end, thanks to Australian scientist Dr Mark Anderson,
of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation.

MILITARY agencies have battled with the problem for decades; how to
create a system which lets staff simultaneously use both classified
and unclassified networks all on the same computer. Their search has
just come to an end, thanks to Australian scientist Dr Mark Anderson,
of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation.

Traditionally, the military used one major security tool to separate
their classified and unclassified networks: the air gap. The best way to
protect against an intruder who might slip in and copy secret information
was to ensure classified networks were not plugged into the outside world.

Dr Anderson, who won the prestigious Minister for Defence Achievement
Award last month, has developed a suite of information security products
called Starlight, which the Australian Defence Organisation will use as
its primary means of achieving high-grade protection of its information
systems.

`As far as I am aware, no one else in the world has been able to do
this before in this manner,'' said the SA-based Dr Anderson, who is the
head of the Advanced Computer Capabilities Group in the Electronics and
Surveillance Research Laboratory's IT division.

Starlight will, for example, allow someone sitting at one workstation to
cut and paste text from documents from both inside a classified network
and in the Internet, or any other unclassified network.

They can then merge the data into a new file and mail it to either the
Internet or the military network.=20

One of the big advantages of Starlight is that it provides protection
even if the dual-use computer is compromised by a virus or worm.

The suite includes both hardware and software products. There are three
components: Stubs, the interactive link and a third item, of which,
Dr Anderson said, `I can't tell you'' - presumably it is classified
information, as is much of DSTO's work.=20

All scientists working for DSTO, the technology research wing of the
Defence Department, must have a minimum security clearance of `secret''.

The interactive link, a piece of hardware that can be clipped on to
the side of a computer with the ease of plugging in a printer cable,
has two parts: the Data Diode, which only allows data to flow in one
direction (from the untrusted network to the trusted military computer
network); and the `trusted switch'', lodged between the keyboard and
computer, which allows users to swap the keyboard between classified and
unclassified use for data input. Both parts can work with `untrusted''
software, which has not been cleared for military use.

The interactive link can be used with or without encryption, which makes
make the product less expensive, Dr Anderson said.

In presenting the researcher with the award and a $15,000 cheque,
the Minister for Defence, John Moore, said that the Defence Signals
Directorate, a key defence group, had benefited from Dr Anderson's work.

The official DSD-licensed evaluation facility, Canberra-based Admiral
Management Services, is testing Starlight's security for an E6 rating -
the military's highest level of assurance. A South Australian company
Vision Abell is leading a consortium to commercialise Starlight. And
Compaq in the US recently bought 30 units of the interactive link,
the first sale of a Starlight product.

More recently, Dr Anderson has been working on Shapes Vector, an
intrusion-detection system for policing and managing large networks
subject to information warfare attacks.

Shapes Vector uses intelligent agents to collect information, and then
presents it in a way which lets a user visualise and patrol a network.

A former Melburnian, the 39-year-old Dr Anderson earned a computer
science degree from the University of New England in 1982, and a PhD
from Monash. `I learned computers using punch cards,'' he laughed.

He was inspired to create Starlight after reading a military wish-list
of unsolved problems in 1991. The researcher and his team worked up to
65 hours a week for about a year. In his spare time, he tried to keep
his mind fresh for the project by reading sci-fi books. Hundreds of
paperbacks by the likes of Philip K. Dick, Iain Banks and Isaac Asimov
line his shelves at home.

Caption: Photo: Starlight express: Dr Mark Anderson's program,
Starlight, will allow people to use classified and unclassified networks
simultaneously.=20 Picture: PETER MATHEW