Ultrasecure operating system maker Green Hills Software is quietly providing some major network equipment manufacturers with an extra layer of security for its devices.

Green Hills, which last fall released a commercial version of its hardened Integrity-178B operating system used in military fighter planes, is now leveraging that technology for the network, as well. Company officials here revealed they have built a secure virtualization platform for networking equipment based on a combination of the company's secure OS virtualization and networking technologies.

"Connecting our secure operating system environment to networking equipment, which is not secure" didn't make sense, says Dan Mender, vice president of business development for Green Hills. So the company has built a secure, virtualized networking platform based on its hardened Integrity OS plus its own switching and routing software -- a combination that Green Hills say protects network devices from denial-of-service, buffer overflow, and other attacks.

Susan Hares, director of networking solutions for Green Hills, says this secure virtualization approach for networking equipment is crucial to protecting switches, routers, firewalls, and other network devices from attack. "Network attacks are coming -- it has just been considered bad form to make a lot of noise about it," she says. "The domino effect of [an attack on a network device] can be quite serious."

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