As the need for interoperability between diverse networks of different trust increases, and the rapid deployment of API enabled services becomes key to gaining operational edge, the demand for API-based high assurance cross domain platforms has grown across government, defence and security.  To support architectures designed for the modern, dynamic and ever changing world, no longer can cross domain solutions be deployed on the expectation that the environment will remain static, and corresponding threats not rapidly evolve.

APP-XD is a High-Assurance Cross Domain Solution (CDS) that was developed in collaboration with UK Government based on the HiTMAN CDS Architecture to provide flexible and cost effective CDS support for secure API integration across separate network trust domains.

CDS platforms benefit from the combination of the use of hardware modules, such as FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays), and robust government evaluation processes, to provide a level of assurance and protection that cannot be achieved with commercial products, such as Firewalls, that remain susceptible to software vulnerabilities. However, the ‘Achilles heel’ of CDS architectures to date has typically been the requirement to decrypt CDS traffic in a less trusted network zone, such as a DMZ, rendering such traffic vulnerable to an attacker. The innovative HiTMAN architecture, allows CDS traffic to be safely decrypted within a trusted hardware module, which cannot be accessed or modified by attackers.