Multi-level secure information sharing between smart cloud systems of systems

Abstract

There is a need to have secure information sharing in the industry and government sectors. For example, countries within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) often have a common goal requiring them to communicate, but they lack a technological platform for fast information sharing, especially if the countries have different access rights to the information. Thus, the same information that an organization wants to share with multiple partners needs to be securely shared at multiple levels. In addition, the manner in which information is shared needs to be flexible enough to accommodate changes on demand, due to the nature of the information or relationship with the sharing organizations. This thesis proposes a configurable, cloud infrastructure that enables multiple layers of secure information sharing between multiple organizations. This thesis follows a systems engineering process to propose a preliminary architecture of such a system, including an analysis of alternatives of some of the attributes of the system. Secondly, the thesis instantiates part of the proposed architecture with a proof-of-concept physical system in a laboratory environment. The proof-of-concept chooses a specific scenario of information sharing that would allow NATO members to access shared data faster, and in a secure fashion, in order to make decisions more quickly with the authorized information.