DARPA Announces Secure Data On Mobile Handsets Program

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced Tuesday a program that aims sharing battlefield information at multiple levels of security classification through a single handheld device.

Dubbed ‘Secure Handhelds on Assured Resilient networks at the tactical Edge (SHARE)’, this program uses a resilient secure network that links devices without needing to route traffic through secure data centers, the official release dated January 10 said.

“Troops forward deployed today have to have multiple laptops or devices that are approved to communicate at various levels of classification,” said Joe Evans, DARPA program manager. “The vision of SHARE is to develop software that moves the multilevel security management function from a handful of data centers down to trusted, handheld devices on the tactical edge”.

This capability would be able to operate over existing commercial and military networks while maintaining the security of sensitive information and safety of operations. The SHARE program seeks expertise in handheld device security, future internet architectures, multilevel information sharing and tactical networking applications.

To achieve this vision, the SHARE program is focused on three areas: technologies and policy tools for distributed tactical security management on handheld devices; networking technologies based on resilient and secure architectures that work in challenging environments; and software that rapidly configures security across the network.

The end goal of the program is to demonstrate secure exchange of information at multiple levels of classification over unsecured military and commercial networks (e.g., Wi-Fi and cellular) using a heterogeneous mix of devices—from tactical radios to laptops to handheld devices.