Speaker
Ahmad Douglas
(Los Alamos National Laboratory)
Description
The complex-wide stakes for secure classified computing have been forever raised. The Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration have increased their oversight of the National Laboratories' information technology operations. Scrutiny from the news media and the general public is at an all-time high. Most importantly, we must continue to improve our cyber defenses against the malicious insider.
In this presentation, we will examine the next-generation secure classified computing model being deployed to the Applied Physics (X) Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory. We establish the basic requirements for computing in our organization, which heavily focuses on research, engineering, computation, and visualization. We define a broad threat model, including risks from forgetful or careless employees up through the malicious insider. Walking through the results of our evaluations of existing technology, we discuss the security, scalability, manageability, and usability of several classified desktop solutions. We show how these criteria led to the selection of specific technologies for use in X Division. Finally, we describe the production deployment of "Classified Medialess Computing" in X Division, covering the major aspects of both the end-user and system administrator experiences, and noting how our deployment fits into the wider computing and physical security perspective of tomorrow.
If you are interested in reducing energy consumption, improving utilization of your organization's computing cycles, better protecting your electronic classified information, extending your desktop computing hardware lifecycles, or centralizing your hardware maintenance and system administration points, then this presentation is for you.
Primary author
Ahmad Douglas
(Los Alamos National Laboratory)