Data Integrity Limitations in Hybrid Security Architectures

Abstract

Maximum 200 words.) We discuss a class of computer/network architectures that supports multilevel security and commercial applications, while utilizing primarily commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) workstations, operating systems and hardware components. We show that a property of these architectures is that, while they are capable of supporting multilevel confidentiality policies, they do not generally support partially ordered integrity policies: specifically, these architectures do not support the maintenance of data that is higher in integrity than the integrity level of the COTS components, thus limiting their applicability to processing environments where the integrity of data is consistent with that of low-assurance software