Learn something new every day: NEAT

Recently read an article on Multiple Independent Levels of Security (MILS) which used an acronym whose concepts I was familiar with, but that I had not heard before: NEAT. It stands for:

1. Non-bypassable
2. Evaluatable
3. Always-invoked
4. Tamperproof

In a recent class, I commented on applying three of these to reference monitors and trusted computing bases:

1. tamper proof
2. non-bypassable
3. small enough/simple enough that it can be thoroughly tested for correctness

In retrospect, I probably should have mentioned to them the idea of "always-invoked" (note to self: include that in next class revision) and I probably could have saved some bandwidth by substituting in the much shorter word "evaluatable".

Well...you learn something new all the time, and for me, that is NEAT!

chalmer

P.S. NEAT gets mentions on page two of the four page article.