The Defense Department has made enormous strides in IT innovation in the past two years. Initiatives such as the Air Force’s Kessel Run program are enabling the DOD to build out in-house development teams and speed up time to deployment. A key part of this is developing in an unclassified environment then shifting into a classified one.
Historically, development was executed in a classified environment which resulted in a far slower and less dynamic process. This is evident in the fact that, through its Kessel Run project, the Air Force significantly reduced its software development process from eight years down to roughly four months.
Central to these initiatives’ success and speed is cross-domain security. DOD must have a cross-domain solution in place to permit communication and data transfer between unclassified and classified levels—and to reap the benefits of this newer, more agile model.
Code Low, Deploy High
Leveraging unclassified resources for the development of code to be run in a classified manner has many tangible advantages, from increased agility and cost savings to the ability to attract better talent. However, none of those benefits can be realized without a cross-domain solution in place.
A cross-domain solution represents the gateway between networks at different classification levels. Pushing data to classified networks from unclassified is a major concern, but the risk of transferring that data can be made manageable. Concerns include maliciously or inadvertently passing malware or bad code that can adversely affect missions at the classified level. Cross-domain solutions can scan and validate data prior to any of that data being pushed to a classified network, ensuring that the data is correct and safe to pass. Additionally, it can validate new transport specifications, such as Cross Domain Unstructured Data Exch ..
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