Overview of the security architecture of the Comprehensive Maritime Awareness system

The Comprehensive Maritime Awareness (CMA) system tries to identify anomalous behavior and potential threats associated with the global maritime domain that could impact the United States and coalition partners' security. It analyzes data from multiple sources that impose different data handling requirements, to discover potential threats. Security architecture and mechanisms are essential enablers for data sharing. More data stewards will share their data when they feel secure with the data protection mechanism of the system that will host their data. Critical technologies for data protection and access mediation for CMA are Oracle label security (OLS) and attribute-based access control (ABAC) based on federated identity management. Federated identity providers use security assertion markup language (SAML) 2.0 as a protocol to exchange user identity and attributes. This paper provides a high-level overview of the CMA security architecture. It explains how different security mechanisms seamlessly work together to protect data and mediate access.

1. INTRODUCTION

The Comprehensive Maritime Awareness (CMA) Joint Capability Technology Demonstrations (JCTD) program tries to identify anomalous behavior and potential threats associated with the global maritime domain that could impact the United States and coalition partners' security, safety, economy, or environment. Information from multiple agencies and nations is gathered and analyzed, and the users from multiple agencies and nations access the system to discover potential threats.