Abstract :
The past few years have seen what can only be described as a veritable explosion in IT and open systems development. Without appropriate security within commercial products, defence will remain unable to exploit the potential of these products, remaining locked into high cost bespoke developments. The TDP process is a stepping stone to allow the MoD to get closer to the objective of providing large scale, affordable, functional, secure heterogeneous IT infrastructures, built using predominantly commercial off the shelf (COTS) products. The SOS TDP is a collaborative venture between the MoD (US) and the IT industry. The goal of the SOS TDP is to improve the level of security functionality and interoperability between and within mainstream COTS products. Key agreements between suppliers on the use of selected de facto and de jure security standards underpins the TDP process. The TDP includes a number of developments, practical business problems are used as a means of testing the capabilities, effectiveness and interoperability of integrated multi vendor product systems. These developments are known as the TDP Demonstrators. Ultimately the programme´s aim is to see these prototyped capabilities supported in actual COTS offerings
