Wind River Updates Platform for Securing Critical Infrastructure

Wind River, a subsidiary of Intel Corporation that provides embedded software for connected systems, this week announced updates to its platform for securing critical infrastructure.

Part of the Wind River product portfolio for trusted systems, the latest versions of Wind River VxWorks MILS Platform include features for embedded systems on multi-core processors and a security evaluation evidence package for unicore-based systems that may undergo a high assurance, system-level security evaluation.

Built on a secure separation kernel that is compliant to the “U.S. Government Protection Profile for Separation Kernels in Environments Requiring High Robustness,” version 1.03 (SKPP), VxWorks MILS Platform provides an operating runtime environment designed for systems having high security, high assurance, and high performance requirements.

The platform reduces costs by consolidating applications with mixed domains or security levels on a single hardware platform, the company explained. Additionally, the VxWorks MILS Platform provides security by enforcing time and space resource allocation, information flow control, and fault isolation so that the system will conform to the security policies as defined by its security architects and system integrators.

The VxWorks MILS Platform is capable of supporting multi-core processors for high performance and high scalability, the company said. In addition, for unicore-based security-critical systems that need to undergo a system-level security evaluation toward gaining an authorization to operation (ATO) or an accreditation, the platform offers a security evaluation evidence package based on the Common Criteria, the SKPP, and RTCA DO-178C (EUROCAE ED-12C) Design Assurance Level A.

“The VxWorks MILS Platform provides the ideal foundation on which to build multilevel secure (MLS) systems, cross-domain solutions (CDS) and other security-critical systems. It enables security-critical applications, carrying potentially confidential or mission-critical data, to coexist on the same system with medium- or low-security applications, which may connect to non-secure channels,” said Paul Chen, senior director of product management at Wind River. “By sharing a single hardware platform among multiple applications, customers can significantly reduce the costs of the system by reducing size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements, allowing devices and systems to be more cost effective to develop, deploy, operate, and maintain.”

More information about Wind River VxWorks MILS Platform is available here.

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