GEMSOS MLS Product Concepts

• Verifiably Secure PLC - OpenPLC on GEMSOS
• MLS Trusted Workstation
• GemSeal™ Guard
• Management & Control Guard
• SCADA Guard
• File Services
• GEMSOS MLS RTOS

Recent Publications

• Cyber defense triad for where security matters

  Roger R. Schell
  Communications of the ACM, 2016
• Using Proven Reference Monitor Patterns for Security Evaluation
  Mark R. Heckman, Roger R. Schell
  Information 2016, 7(2),23; doi:10.3390/info7020023
  Special Issue: "Evaluating the Security of Complex Systems"
  Published 26 April 2016
• A Multi-Level Secure File Sharing Server and its Application to a Multi-Level Secure Cloud
  Mark R. Heckman, Roger R. Schell, Edwards E. Reed
  In Proc. MILCOM 2015, October 26-28, 2015, Tampa, Fl.

• Towards Formal Evaluation of a High-Assurance Guard
  Mark R. Heckman, Roger R. Schell, Edwards E. Reed
  In Proc. 6^th Layered Assurance Workshop (LAW) 2012
  December 3-4, 2012, Orlando, FL., pp. 25-31. (Entire proceedings available)
• A High-Assurance Virtual Guard Architecture
  Mark R. Heckman, Roger R. Schell, Edwards E. Reed
  In Proc. MILCOM 2012, October 29-November 1, 2012, Orlando, Fl.

• Using a high assurance TCB for infrastructure security

  Mark Heckman, Roger Schell, Edwards Reed
  CSIIRW '11 Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Workshop on Cyber Security and Information Intelligence Research, 2011
• Composing a High-Assurance Infrastructure Out of TCB Components
  Mark R. Heckman, Roger R. Schell, Edwards E. Reed
  Presented at the Layered Assurance Workshop (LAW) 2011.
  December 2011, Orlando, FL.

Recent Presentations

Rochester Institute of Technology
ESL Global Cybersecurity Institute


Presented: December 1, 2023, Rochester, NY.
Abstract:
Powerful Security Kernel Cyber-Defense Reset

Established cyber defense approaches - penetrate and patch (a game we can never win) — have failed. They have not, do not, and indeed cannot provide verifiable security for critical infrastructure, IoT (both of which require strong integrity protections) and classic controlled sharing applications (Mandatory Access Control — MAC — secrecy domains) for Cloud, appliance, and e-commerce/web services environments.

But that is just the latest chapter in the decades long search for trusted computing solutions. Having come to a fork in the road, industry — and government — took the path that brought us here. It is time to double back and see what has already been shown to work, and reconsider Reference Monitor technology and the Security Kernel system-level commercial products that implement it.

This presentation will begin with a very brief review of cyber security history by someone who was there at the beginning and who has seen multiple successful system deployments run in highly contested networked, global environments — without ever needing a security patch. The "secret sauce" — applying model-based engineering design to the system-wide security problem — is reproducible, effective, and sorely needed for critical infrastructure, consumer appliances, and multi-tenant cloud/time-sharing systems.

Slides: Powerful Security Kernel Cyber-defense Reset — (PDF)
Roger R. Schell, Edwards E. Reed
Video Presentation — YouTube

Classic Publications