The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched a program to develop hardware and software architectures that can ensure that critical data and transactions are secure and protected as they move between systems.
Whether a piece of information is private, proprietary, or sensitive to national security, users have little guarantees about where it resides or goes in between systems. When a user enters information on a phone, for example, it is difficult to know if it remains on the phone or is uploaded to a server beyond the device. Users have few options when it comes to ensuring that sensitive information is appropriately isolated, particularly when it’s loaded to an internet-connected system.
“As cloud systems proliferate, most people still have some information that they want to physically track – not just entrust to the ether,” Walter Weiss, DARPA program manager, said. “Users should be able to trust their devices to keep their information private and isolated.”
The program, called the Guaranteed Architecture for Physical Security (GAPS), is designed to ensure that these transactions are isolated and that the systems they move across have the necessary data security. The idea of this program is to develop hardware and software tools to protect this data.
The GAPS program will look to research the creation of hardware components and interfaces; develop software co-design tools; and integrate these components and tools. In other words, the new hardware components and interfaces are designed to provide system designers with a library of hardware tools to securely isolate data during transactions.
GAPS is part of DARPA’s Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) – a five-year, $1.5 billion investment in the future of domestic, U.S. government and defense electronics systems. In this phase, DARPA is seeking to develop electronics components, including the advancement of electronics that can enforce security and privacy protections.