Sun Microsystems' "Trusted" Solaris 8 4/01 Operating Environment, considered the de facto standard for protecting classified and sensitive information, is the first and only operating system to receive the highest level of security certification under the Common Criteria Labelled Security Protection Profile (LSPP) at Evaluation Assurance Level 4 (EAL4).
According to Tarun Pranjivan, technology consultant at Sun Microsystems SA, Trusted Solaris is a Unix system designed for customers who require enhanced security and strong access control in a highly secure environment such as military, government, financial and e-commerce environments.
"In the common desktop environment, users can cut and paste between windows, but with Trusted Solaris every object in the system has access limitations. Even a Solaris systems administrator will not be able to access the information without prior clearance," explains Pranjivan.
"Today there is an increasingly hostile environment where internal and external security threats are growing in frequency and sophistication. Security conscious environments require an operating system that can protect trade secrets, customer lists, litigation strategies and other confidential, mission-critical information from security breaches," he says.
The Trusted Solaris 8 OE takes security to the next level with mandatory access control, which restricts or grants access to data only after verifying the clearance level of the user and comparing it to the security level of the data. Providing multiple levels of security to control access and handling of data, the Trusted Solaris 8 OE provides extensive protection for servers and desktop systems that process highly sensitive information.
Pranjivan would not be drawn on which customers in SA are users of Trusted Solaris, as this information is highly confidential.
The LSPP EAL4 independent evaluation assures customers that Trusted Solaris 8 OE meets the global standards for evaluating IT security set forth by Common Criteria. The LSPP EAL4 certification is equivalent to the Orange Book B1 standard published by the US government.
Solaris already sets the standard for operating system security, but users who require multiple levels of security can turn to Trusted Solaris 8 OE, which provides the highest level of security in the marketplace.
In the US, one organisation that demands security clearance for classified information is Veridian, a provider of information-based systems and integrated solutions for the national intelligence community, the Department of Defense, law enforcement and other federal and local government agencies.
Using the capabilities of the Trusted Solaris 8 OE, Veridian developed the Trusted Network Environment, a scalable suite of applications, servers, databases, gateways and services that ensure fully audited, controlled access to all information and services across the IT enterprise.
While the government sector has always required greater security, today many private sector companies are also demanding a trusted network environment. For instance, a service provider may need to consolidate similar customers on the same server for management and cost efficiencies.
The Trusted Solaris 8 OE, with its server virtualisation features, enables the service provider to guarantee that customers sharing the same server will be unable to access each other's information.
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Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision - "The Network Is The Computer" - has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com.
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