Much has been made in the last two to three years of high profile data losses by Government bodies. However, the reality is that Government communication, particularly when it is at a high level, is extremely secure and becoming more and more so with every year that passes. The same is true of military communications and data encryption. Here, John Barrett, managing director of Nexus GB, explains the way the military and Government are using the Datakey Electronics portable data carriers supplied exclusively in the UK & Ireland by Nexus to ensure that official secrets remain just that.

Permit me to be flippant for a moment. In the final episode of the most recent series of BBC drama Doctor Who, Martha, the eponymous Doctor's assistant, is entrusted with something called the Osterhagen Key. An anagram of the phrase, ‘Earth's Gone', the key is a kind of CIK (Crypto Ignition Key), which allows the character to communicate with a series of other people across the globe, who also have access to a similar device.

Now, this is science fiction, but the key could very easily have included one of our products in its design! Furthermore, it also illustrates the extent to which the concept of the CIK has permeated popular culture. Most people understand that there are ways of producing secure access keys that could allow two or more people to communicate, or take a particular action with both party's permission. However, very few people know how these keys are produced. This is even true in industry, where design engineers will often attempt to use other forms of data storage devices to create similar security ‘keys', when in fact only dedicated industrial portable memory products, like those Nexus supplies, can really do the job. In contrast, in military projects security has always been paramount and the concept of the CIK is both well understood and rapidly evolving.

However, the first thing to stress when attempting to illustrate this is that, like many suppliers in this field, we don't always know what our products are going to be used for. Furthermore, even when we do know what the products are doing, we always maintain our customer's confidentiality.

However, we are familiar with how Datakey Electronics' range of portable memory products is used in voice and data encryption. For instance, they form a key component in the Brent secure phone, which is a secure ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) telephone, which protects voice and data up to and including top secret and all UK caveats. The Brent phone has been evaluated by SECAN (Military Committee Communications Security & Evaluation Agency, Washington) and approved by the Military Committee for the processing secure dial-up connectivity between LANs. It also meets NATO TEMPEST, the Government standard to secure electronic communications equipment from eavesdroppers.

The Brent phone encrypts a voice digitally, ensuring that the two people on either end of the phone are allowed to talk to each other and that each is actually the person they claim to be. Our memory tokens are used as part of the CIK that is inserted into the phone.

The Brent phone was a big improvement over previous secure communication systems, because in the past the security measure was built into the device itself, not into a separate CIK. In contrast, if you don't insert the CIK into the Brent phone it's a normal telephone and, as a result, it's the CIK, not the device itself which needs to be managed. An organisation might have several Brent phones in several locations, which means the system is a much more portable than those security measures applied in the past.

Similar memory tokens are used in the STU-III (Secure Telephone Unit Third Generation), the US equivalent of the Brent phone as well as mobile secure communication phones, normally used by the military for communicating in the field. Furthermore, this sort of secure communication isn't limited to just voice protocol. It is fair to say that if a UK or US Government or military product requires a CIK then there is a very high chance it will feature one of Datakey Electronics' portable memory products.

Much more modern innovations are the High Assurance Internet Protocol Encryptor (HAIPE), a new generation of network encryptors designed to provide user data confidentiality, traffic protection and integrity at the IP layer. HAIPE compliant devices automatically establish single or multiple security associations with other HAIPE devices enabling the secure exchange of encrypted user data across a network and can even be used for teleconferencing or VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) applications. Nexus has provided the rugged portable memory tokens for such systems, which are in use in several Government departments.

As well as communication, memory tokens are used in security applications by both the military and the Government. Some of these are two key systems, in which one key is assigned seniority as a ‘supervisor' key. Both keys are required if a certain action, ranging from opening a door to gaining access to armaments, is to be performed in the system. This kind of operation often features a record keeping function on the key, which can be as complex as the software that runs it. Normally though, the minimum data it would record would be the location of the key and the activities it has been used to perform.

In addition, a number of Government and military departments use our mass storage device, designated the NFX MSD, which is distinct from our regular range of keys and tokens, as a data storage device in applications where hard drives, CDs, DVDs and USB sticks can't provide the necessary safety. In these instances the NFX is literally used for storing highly confidential data, because it can only be read by a computer fitted with the appropriate ‘reader'. These readers are only available from us and are only sold to legitimate customers. The NFX could also be the answer for the multitude of consumer facing organisations who have been the victims of highly public data losses over the last couple of years. They are ideal for storing confidential databases of customer information for instance; because even if they are lost, no one else without the appropriate ‘reader" can decode or read them.

I think the crux of the design of most of these applications is simple; longevity. Of course, some designers have unique needs such as ruggedness, ingress protection or ease of operation. For instance, we have worked on military applications where the end user will be working in harsh conditions, wearing gloves, which means ease of use has to be paramount. However, in many instances, the appropriate Government or military bodies, or Government suppliers, came to us because they were aware that our keys will not become redundant any time soon. We are committed to ensuring that every product we sell can be re-ordered during the lifespan of the product the OEM builds it into, providing we can agree on a chip that will have the appropriate longevity itself. For instance, today we would recommend SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface Bus) over Microwire or I²C (Inter-Integrated Circuit).

The Brent phone is a great example of this kind of longevity, because it has been in use for nearly fifteen years. There is no other data storage technology that you could buy in the early 1990's that is still available now. Of course, the range of Datakey Electronics' portable data carriers have improved in that time, developing larger memory capacities and new functionality, but a customer who bought a specific memory Key or Token nearly twenty years ago can place an order for a like for like replacement today.

So, next time you find yourself watching the world's most famous time traveller on a Saturday evening, think for a moment about the Osterhagen key and the real life CIKs that are used in the military and government. It could be their longevity, not that of the Doctor, that is the key to the plot!