Isode have adopted the SMHS XML security policy encoding for their Security Policy, Security Label and Security Clearance infrastructure developed by Isode for use in their products.

The Combined Communications-Electronics Board (CCEB) have ratified the latest version of ACP 133, the common directory services and procedures for supporting interoperability between the CCEB Nations. Released on the 19th June 2008, ACP 133 Edition C deprecates the use of Edition B which was published over 8 years ago.

When diagnosing interoperability problems in Internet protocols, it is often necessary to consult the original standard text. Unless you are particularly organised, looking for an RFC may often just involve doing a Google search, which can quickly find the required RFC, but often just in a simple text format. For example, have a look at the results for a search for "RFC 2798".

The IETF provide a set of HTML formatted RFCs on their tools website, which allow you to quickly get to the appropriate page, section or related RFC. It would be much more efficient if there was a way to simply enter an RFC number and go directly to this nicely formatted version.

Telos have announced that they have been awarded a three year contract to provide the Canadian DND with a formal messaging solution.
The XACTA Automated Message Handling System (AMHS), which has already being adopted by DISA within the US DMS programme, will provide a centralized, web-based solution.

Qinetiq, one of the two organisations created from the former Defence Evaluation and Research Agency in 2001,has announced that is has completed that acquisition of Boldon James. It has paid some £20million, with just over £4million of that being conditional on future performance.

It appears they are changing the high assurance messaging guard at NATO. Since 1997 NATO have used Thales XOMail/Guard to provide separation between NATO and MISSION environments.
Now it appears that NAMSA is procuring the NEXOR Sentinel as "the high assurance mailguard of choice for operational use".

The French DGA has initiated a project to develop an open-source military messaging solution based upon the Mozilla Thunderbird email client. The project is supported by the French Ministry of Defence and BT Global Services, and aims to provide a set of services to support formal messaging including:

• security - signature and encryption
• security labelling - using ESS
• status notifications - including signed receipts
• directory integration - for addressing information and certificate validation
• STANAG 4406 elements of service.

A new web site, http://www.x500standard.com/ provides a new, centralized resource for information about the X.500 standards.
It provides:

• a high-level overview of the X.500 Directory model and technology
• free PDF versions of all the latest X.500 standards
• the lastest corrigenda
• lists of X.500 products and consultants
• and a discussion list for discussing things X.500, including defect reports.

All-in-all a good first stop if you are just looking to get up to speed with X.500, or are interested in the more detailed elements of specifications.

The CWID '07 trials start in the second week of June, and messaging and directory vendors are participating in a number of those trials.

• Clearswift demonstrate their messaging (SMTP and X.400), directory (DISP) and management (SNMP) high assurance guards in the NATO trials "NMS Interoperability". In addition, they are participating in a UK trial, "Security Labelling From Text Labels to X.841 labels" (UKIT17), to show how security labels can be securely mapped between the different formats that are supported by different domains.

As well as opening a wide range of packet capture files, Wireshark can now open ASN.1 encoded files, such as certificates or X.400 content. So now you can view your own ASN.1 dumps in exactly the same way as if you had captured them from the network.

This gives Wireshark a similar capability to Microsoft's ASpiriN, Gemini Security Solutions GUIDumpASN (based on Peter Guttman's dumpasn1.c) and a range of other ASN.1 analysis tools.