The company pays particular attention to international standards and compliance testing, which both McLallen and Johnson consider the key components for interoperability. He reports that the company provides X.400 and X.500 technology to a number of firewall vendors, and they in turn use it to create application proxies on their firewalls. In the directory area of business, McLallen explains, the company provides a guardian product, especially for the defense and intelligence communities, to shield an organization's individual hierarchical structures or as a protection mechanism to mask the entire agency. Johnson adds that the company is hardware independent and, in some cases, software independent as well. The company provides the Messageware Desktop technology, which enables Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, or any message application program interface-compliant user agent, to have security for military content.
Security is seamless to users.
They can go home at night and use Microsoft Exchange or Outlook to send e-mail to friends across the country. Then they come to work the next day and send highly classified messages with exactly the same look and feel, with only a few more functions to secure and set priorities. The military has expressed strong interest in the company's allied communications protocols, or ACPs, which define standards, features, functions, speed of service and mandatory and optional services required to meet interoperability requirements among the five nations. This protocol has been reworked and is being proposed as a common allied security communications standard, Johnson claims. This protocol effort provides the company with an international framework for security interoperability, and acceptance of ACP 120 implementations is anticipated.