Information Assurance

Information Assurance focuses on providing consulting and other Systems Engineering services to assist in the sound design and development of products and systems such that the Certification and Accreditation requirements of relevant national security authorities are met.

Core Competencies

The Information Assurance (IA) team has extensive security engineering knowledge and technical experience and has built strong relationships with the national security authorities (e.g., NSA, CSE, CESG) of several nations for product certification and system accreditation activities. This breadth of security knowledge and experience allows GD Canada to architect and deliver tactical IA solutions that will mitigate security threats in deployed communications systems.

In support of formal Certification and Accreditation activities, GD Canada's IA engineers provide:

• security architecture,
• derived requirements for the Security Enforcing Functions,
• high level threat-risk and vulnerability analysis,
• input to security-related test procedures and performance of high-level penetration testing,
• secure operating system configuration, and
• supporting security-relevant documentation such as accreditation plans and security impact analysis.

Skills and Knowledge Areas

The IA team contains Professional Engineers (PEng) and other personnel with advanced degrees in IT security-related fields such as Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science. As well, several of these personnel have security-specific certifications such as the internationally recognized International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC2) Certified Information Systems Security Professional designation. Accordingly, the IA team has been organized into knowledge/expertise areas that complement the ISC2 security domains of knowledge and the strong integration capabilities of GD Canada in general. Specifically these expertise areas are:

• Network/Telecom Security and Cryptography;
• Security Management (including Security Management Practices, Security Architecture and Models, and the development/planning aspects of Operational and Physical Security);
• Access Control Systems and Methodology;
• Application and Systems Development Security; and
• Customer Security Consultation Services (consulting services on all knowledge areas noted above as well as Business Continuity/Disaster Response Planning and Law/Investigation/Ethics.