Secure and QoS-Managed Information Exchange Between Enterprise and Constrained Environments

Mobile devices performing mission-critical functions at the tactical edge, such as those employed by first responders, military personnel, and law enforcement, operate in environments that are vastly different from enterprise computing environments. In spite of the differences in resource availability, threat models, vulnerabilities, information formats, and communication protocols, there is a great advantage to (and great demand for) enabling information exchange between the tactical edge and enterprise environments. Creating a specialized mobile version of each desired service that incorporates an appropriate level of security protection and quality of service (QoS) for the tactical users is one possibility. Such an approach is not cost effective, however, as the market for a given tactical application is small compared to the commercial user base for mobile applications and services. Furthermore, the need for information or services from the enterprise by tactical users can be too ad hoc and time critical, e.g., during disaster response, to support developing a specialized version. Finally, service specialization for mobile web access covers only one of multiple information dissemination and access patterns that arise in tactical operations. This paper presents the design and a prototype implementation of a gateway solution that provides secure tactical-enterprise information exchange and handles the differences in resource availability, QoS requirements, communication formats, and protocols.