Nexor Directory in Defence
The Challenge
Bringing together members of the Army, Navy and Air Force, this national defence force needed a whitepages-style telephone directory that would enable staff to look up each other’s contact details easily. The new virtual directory had to support the need for secure formal messaging, something that its predecessor did not.
Contact and organisational data had not been stored in a single repository before. Users had not been given access to the Internet, meaning that custom software had to be installed on each user’s machine, and they had to obtain information from several different systems:
- Two different military and public service personnel information databases
- Voice system for telephone numbers
- ‘Everybody’ database for unique common names
- Name and address book for email addresses of joint services personnel
- Certificate management sub-system for certificates and revocation lists.
The requirement was for a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) product capable of storing organisational information for, and being accessed by, every person in the defence force. Certificates and revocation lists needed to be published. As the new system would be critical to defence force operation, effective support services were an important aspect of the requirement.
The Nexor Solution
Nexor Directory was selected to address the requirement. Conformant to X.500 and LDAP (Local Directory Access Protocol) version 3, the product is capable of storing contact and organisational details for large numbers of users. Data from all sources is integrated and merged into a cohesive whole, with a bulk data management tool available to transfer data between systems.
In addition to providing a searchable repository for email addresses, Nexor Directory can be used to publish certificates and revocation lists. It can also maintain a full audit trail so that all significant operations can be tracked; the logging facility can be set to three levels to suit varying audit requirements.
Web-based interfaces can be developed to support:
- Directory queries
- Requests for changes to user entries
- Validation of identity before issuing certificates
- Management of the new contact details database.
Resilience is achieved through the use of the standard X.500 replication protocol (DISP). Replicating directories on different servers protects against hardware failures and also requires fewer distributed operations, which can in turn improve response times and reduce network costs.
Nexor Directory comes with a comprehensive technical support service, which includes updates and patches as they become available. Now a mature product, it has been continually enhanced to maintain and improve its scalability, interoperability, performance and data reliability.
The Result
Defence force personnel are able to find information more quickly using their usual browser and the Internet, increasing their efficiency and avoiding the need to install non-standard software on their PCs. Their access can be restricted to information appropriate to their classification. More than one person can update an entry without causing corruption or other problems.
Support for certificates enables the use of secure formal messaging. Certificates confirm the authority of an individual or organisation to carry out an action. Certificate revocation lists record certificates that have been revoked within the period for which they should have been valid; this is an essential second stage as, without it, certificates with known problems will continue to be accepted until they expire.
The risk of system issues impairing operational efficiency is very low, with Nexor’s team of highly experienced support experts available to identify and resolve problems promptly.
As well as fully addressing the requirements originally identified, Nexor Directory’s support of major messaging protocols and conformance with a wide range of Internet standards ensures that it is able to accommodate future changes to defence force systems. The solution will continue to be effective for the foreseeable future, through whatever changes to hardware and software platforms that might be required.