The View From NCS Technologies

NCS Partners With Aruba For Network Switching & Wireless

Partner on Wireless Networking for Government

Earlier this month, NCS was notified about industry-wide security vulnerabilities which affect the Intel-, AMD- and ARM-based products we provide. We are taking action to help our customers address their concerns.

The Air Force Research Laboratory has announced the next version of SecureView, which will include both the addition of several long-awaited features as well as the return of one of my favorite features, now in a brand-new package.

NCS is proud to announce the addition of HP Enterprise solutions to our diverse ecosystem.  Now more than ever NCS has the tools to provide solutions for nearly any IT need.  Whether you're deploying a VDI environment for your mobile workforce or adding compute capacity to your datacenter, NCS Technologies has the expertise to support your IT modernization project.

We're back from HIMSS 2016, and what a week we had! Many new visitors to the booth brought lots of interest and feedback. The time spent in the booth also offered plenty of opportunity to learn about our customers. 

At a recent trade show we showed off our latest NCS Technologies Vortex workstation running SecureView 2.1 with all the bells and whistles - Liquid-cooled Intel Core i7 processor, multiple high-end graphics cards, fiber NICs, 32GB of RAM, multiple monitors.

What You Can Do WithSecureView

SecureView is a multi-level virtual platform which allows a user to run multiple securely isolated environments (typically up to five or six environments up till now) on a single PC, provide hardware-enforced security and deliver superior virtualization in the most demanding environments. The virtual platform is made possible by extensive development work by the Air Force Research Laboratory, the open source community, Assured Information Security and NCS.

The great thing about the latest SecureView 2.1 is the ability to run more isolated environments than was previously possible. Our feedback is that analysts need to run 7, 8 or even 15 VMs in some cases to replace all of the physical PCs on the desktop.

Last week's VMWORLD 2015 was a big success!  NCS launched two new zero client products, Cirrus LT Plus 15" notebook and Cirrus DT WiFi desktop zero client.  And, we showcased our popular Cirrus LT 14" notebook zero client, which launched last year, and our enhanced end-to-end VDI solution.  The show was an impressive global gathering of those focused on virtualization, drawing 23,000+ people intensely interested in all things VMware and the ecosystem that supports them. 

We wrapped up booth operations today in Baltimore at the 2015 Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium and many conversations centered on the topic of virtualization.  Whether virtualizing the desktop in a datacenter environment (VMware, Citrix, Microsoft, etc.) or on a host workstation (OpenXT, SecureView) everyone recognizes the benefits of consolidation and centralizing management.

Secure, multi-level computing in government agencies has always been a challenge for end users and IT administrators. The idea of consolidating networks to fewer physical machines is not new, and has been addressed in different ways by various hardware and software approaches over the years. This blog addresses SecureView in this context.

SecureView, the Latest Approach

SecureView represents the latest approach to the multi-level network problem. SecureView is a multi-level virtual platform which allows a user to run multiple securely isolated environments on a single PC, provide hardware-enforced security and deliver superior virtualization in the most demanding environments. The virtual platform is made possible by extensive development work by the Air Force Research Laboratory, the open source community, Assured Information Security and NCS Technologies. Other programs such as DTS and SABER aimed to achieve similar goals but none of them do it as well.