Information Systems
Sandia has a long history of developing information systems that have a high degree of surety for high consequence applications. Surety, in the context of nuclear weapons, is used to refer to the combination of safety, security, and use control. Providing surety for nuclear weapons has been part of Sandia's prime mission for more than 40 years. Developing systems that incorporate the appropriate levels of surety demand a careful balance between competing requirements and features of potential solutions. Risk analysis is a key enabling technology to achieve this balance.
This same kind of balancing act is necessary in the design of "sure" information systems used to meet government, commercial, and personal needs. Our previous surety experience applies directly to other modern information systems. Here, we use the term integrity instead of safety. We include both accuracy and authenticity. Instead of security we use privacy, to include information security concerns of industry, government, and individuals. Finally, use control of nuclear weapons relates to availability of information. Thus, information surety is the balancing of integrity, privacy, and availability of information.
Sandia's philosophy of system design is focused on the optimal balance of system features. One of the cornerstone principles of the use control program has been the development of systems that assure authorized use of nuclear weapons while assuring against unauthorized use. This same principle is clearly applicable to the surety of information systems today.
We are a multi-discipline laboratory, and our technical approach to the problems of information surety have used the broad base of expertise developed for other applications:
- Cryptographic system design
- Vulnerability analysis
- Risk analysis
- Physical security systems
- Complex system design
- Cryptographic key management systems
- Tamper resistance
- Biometrics
- Design of critical software
- Computer and network security
Sandia's long history of providing a balanced approach to surety can be leveraged in other areas of national importance, including military applications, financial transactions and medical information systems.
Sandia also develops decision support systems (DSSs) for a variety of applications, including environmental decisions. DSSs are methods and associated computer codes to provide analyses of critical decision-making criteria, information, and knowledge to the appropriate decision-making entities (e.g., stakeholders, regulators, and site operators) for the purpose of making risk management decisions. Decision support systems supply information to decision makers, that is in turn used to reduce costs, to make defensible decisions, and to prioritize limited funding dollars for waste site investigations and cleanup. Sandia has developed various DSS's to help answer the following questions:
- What risk does a site pose?
- What clean-up levels are appropriate?
- How many samples are needed?
- How many monitoring wells are needed?
- Which sites should be investigated first?
- What is the worth of collecting additional information?
- What remediation technology is best?
- What is the cost uncertainty in the assessment or remediation alternatives?
Other pages in this brochure present information on six examples of Sandia's work on risk assessment for information systems:
For further information, contact:
Sam Varnado, Director
Sandia National Laboratories, MS-0431
Albuquerque, NM 87185-0431
Phone: (505) 845-9555
e-mail: sgvarna@sandia.gov
Submitted October 1996
Layout design by Wanda Mar.