FPGA-Based End-Station Security for High-Performance Networking

Traditional cyber-security methods are inadequate to address the increasing number of threats within larger and higher-performance networks. The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO), and many other organizations report consistent failures within these networks. A key point of failure in securing these networks is the centralized security architecture, which relies heavily on single-point-of-failure network appliances such as firewalls, while insufficiently protecting end systems from compromise. Several commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions provide distributed security functions for commodity workstations. While these COTS solutions are adequate for standard networks operating at data rates up to 1 Gb/s, no distributed solution has emerged that supports the requirements of DOE high-performance-computing storage and visualization systems that operate at 10 Gb/s and beyond. This project will develop a distributed security platform designed specifically for high-performance networks. Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee The new security system should be especially well suited for large-scale high-performance enterprise networks such as those in use in DOE and in large corporations.