Encryption tools developed by Viasat that can process data at commercial speeds are now approved for sale to Five Eyes nations the company announced Sept. 10.
Although these encryption tools were available previously for limited use by Five Eyes nations within a coalition context, the U.S. government has given its approval for those nations to now purchase them freely.
“This release, from the crypto perspective, enables five countries to acquire both through foreign military sales and through direct commercial sales with appropriate approvals, the ability to acquire these faster, more capable software programmable crypto devices and to deploy them with their forces as well,” explained Ken Peterman, Viasat’s president of government systems.
The tools, including the company’s KG-142, are part of the company’s efforts to develop encryption devices that can operate at the same speed as a commercial network.
“We are proactively accelerating the speeds at which our information assurance and network encryption devices operate, so that the network encryption and information assurance (...) can operate at the same speed of relevance, that they can provide this cloud connectivity and provide the assurance attribute and the security attribute at the same speeds and capacities as our satellite equipment in our other communications connectivity initiatives,” Peterman said. “We’re talking about 100 gigabits per second, 200 gigabits per second, moving toward 400 gigabits per second, and even a terabyte per second encryption capabilities.”
Nathan Strout covers space, unmanned and intelligence systems for C4ISRNET.
