Although Microsoft Corp’s Windows NT can meet the full government certification requirements of B1 military-grade security, it looks as though nobody wants to invest the time, effort or money to pursue formal certification. Anyway, B1-grade NT may sell just fine, thank you, without the certification hassle because of the serendipitous fact that nothing that is B1-certified can run Windows applications quite like NT. The Global Internet Software Group, Palo Alto, California, the only existing NT B1 house, says it will have a written report on NT’s B1 prospects ready to deliver to Microsoft and also the government’s MISSI Multilevel Systems Security Initiative in another month, but after that it plans to wash its hands of the certification effort. Global Internet has already delivered an oral version of the report that sources say found no problem in getting NT B1-certified – other than the time and money involved. The Global study was done under contract from MISSI, almost as a favor to Microsoft.

Business decision

With the study about finished, Global vice-president Mark Kriss said, We’ve made it a business decision not to go through the certification process. It’s not worth the effort. The reason, he explained, is that demand from banks and other financial institutions has blossomed for Global’s uncertified B1 version of NT, released for public consumption last month. Microsoft, meanwhile, has repeatedly said it’s not going to make the effort needed for B1 certification, an area in which it has little expertise, but will happily offer its support to anyone willing to try. The B1 version of NT comes from Global’s Internet Software Group, which was Blue Ridge Software Inc before Global acquired it (CI No 2,952). It uses Global’s Centri Trusted Network Transport program on top of NT to give the operating system things like DES encryption, access control features embedded in a modified TCP/IP stack and Din-6 handshaking, which is a B1 standard to prove the source of data coming int! o a computer. Global’s latest version of TNT is the first version to support dial-up B1 connections. Even without B1 certification, the US Navy has been using TNT for two years.