Welcome to the National Security Agency - NSA/CSS

Background

The NSA Mobility Program was established in response to the substantial and justified urgency for delivering Mobility solutions that securely provide the rich user experience of commercial technology. As clients and partners accelerate towards agile and mobile communications, NSA's Information Assurance Directorate (IAD) has the responsibility for providing mobile capabilities that can evolve at the pace of today's commercial market, and balance security requirements with user experience.

Partnerships

NSA mobility program is focused on leading the evolution and directing the development of scalable secure mobile communication frameworks and associated architectures that are founded on commercial technologies. To this end, the Mobility team is charged with working across NSA directorates, with DoD partners, and with other U.S. Government agencies to synchronize mobility related efforts.

Mobility Capability Packages & Protection Profiles

The delivery of secure mobile capabilities to the USG, DoD, and our partners requires a scalable approach to solution development. The approach that the NSA mobility program is taking closely aligns with the NSA Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) strategy. NSA developed the first Draft Mobility Capability Package on 1 February 2012. This document encompasses the 5 major categories of the mobile ecosystem components: Secure Voice, OS/Apps & Mobile Device, Mobile Transport (Carrier), Mobile Enterprise Infrastructure, and Interoperability. The Capability Package will continue to evolve based on the analysis, prototyping, and piloting being executed by the NSA mobility program. Mobility related protection profiles will be created as a bi-product of the Mobility Capability Package evolution and will feed into approved protection profiles.

Enterprise Mobility Architecture for Secure Voice and Non-Resident Data

The third Mobility Capability document to be released is the initial draft release of the Enterprise Mobility Architecture for Secure Cellular. It is intended to be a living reference that will be updated to keep pace with technology and policies as they change over time, as additional security products and services are developed, and as lessons learned from early adopters of this architecture are applied. As a first step, this version contains guidance on the required procedures necessary to build and implement a cellular voice and data capability using commercial grade cellular mobile devices and infrastructure. Future releases will build on this architecture and will include mobile device management, international roaming, unified communications & enterprise services, and public key infrastructure; and ultimately integrate the Wi-Fi service with an expanded list of end devices.

The document is being provided to initiate discussions with our customers and industry. Information on the engagement strategy and proper application of the Mobility Capability Package can be obtained by requesting support from NSA/IAD through a Client Advocate.

The Future

As the Mobility program continues to progress updates will be posted to this site. As the site evolves along with the products being developed things will change rapidly. Check back frequently in order to keep up with the dynamic changes.

The initial focus will be to leverage Federal and internet standards, protocols and algorithms. Several Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) protocol standards have been identified as having potential widespread use. IETF RFCs have been established to allow the use of Suite B Cryptography with these protocols.

Please email any comments on the Mobility Capability Package to mobility@nsa.gov.

Mobility Capability Pkg (Version 2.1)