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GCN Home > August 7, 2000 issue

Air Force tests phone firewalls

A novelty for telephone networks, the technology gets a field test at two locations

By William Jackson
GCN Staff

The Air Force is studying the use of telephone firewalls to improve security and management of its phone systems.

“We would like to have proactive, automated policy enforcement,” said Capt. Mary Plies, chief of information warfare capabilities at the Air Force Information Warfare Battlelab in San Antonio. “It is usually a smart idea to go automated any chance you get.”

Firewalls—standard equipment on data networks—still are a novelty for phone networks. To try out the concept, the Air Force Space Command is installing 50 TeleWall appliances from SecureLogix Corp. of San Antonio at Peterson and Schriever Air Force bases in Colorado.




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TeleWall will monitor all incoming and outgoing calls at the bases and enforce security policies set by administrators.

The Space Command, headquartered in Golden, Colo., is sponsoring the test, but the lab will do the performance evaluation.

“We chose the sites because we wanted to make sure we had representative operational environments,” Plies said. “Peterson has an older infrastructure, and Schriever has gone all digital.”

Trial by fire

The lab does not do formal product evaluations. “We try to infuse new technology into the Air Force by doing quick turnarounds,” Plies said. “We see if it really works, see if it crashes when it’s in the field.”

The lab focuses on technologies rather than products, determining whether they are mature enough to be incorporated into Air Force systems. After collecting surveys from users in the field, the lab will report its findings and recommendations to the Air Force Requirements Oversight Council, which specifies program requirements.

The Air Force has policies for telephone use, but enforcement is casual and confined to obvious violations such as hooking up a notebook computer to a fax line.



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