The Commonwealth of Australia

Damian Andrew Marriott

Mark Stephen Anderson

Dean Crawford Engelhardt

Suneel Singh Randhawa

John Desborough Yesberg

Lisa Nayda

Ken Hayman

Brendan Beahan

Malcolm Stevens

An event handling system to schedule and translate semantic deductions form Intelligent Agents and sensors into events capable of being made observable by a Recipient system such as monitor that provides a particular view of virtual objects and events is disclosed. The event handling system also encapsulates the system's notion of time. In fact, a human observer can shift the system along the temporal axis (up to the present) in order to replay events, or undertake analyses as a result of speeded-up or slowed-down notions of system time. The event handling system receives events from Clients/Sources via connections through the event handling system Input Portals, and uses Shared Memory as its form of inter-process communication with the Monitors. The event handling system makes events available for a recipient observation sub-system to read and provide their particular view. There can be many Clients and Recipient systems connected to the event handling system at the same time.

Event handling system

Geo View is a three-dimensional virtual universe in which a real-world or virtual object may be represented by one or more virtual objects whose attributes are derived from attributes of the real-world object via a flexible user-specifiable mapping. Typically a two-dimensional plane located in three-dimensional space is used to visualize the universe of interest. The placement of virtual objects in the universe typically having a shape is governed by the absolute or relative geographical location of the real-world objects, and also by a flexible set of user-specified layout rules. In addition to the visualisation of various objects, the human observer can attach sounds to objects. The representation of real-world objects with rapidly time-changing attributes may be simplified by the use of Synthetic Strobes, flexible user-specified filters which shift changes in the visual attributes of a shape from one time-domain to another.

Geographic view of a modelling system

An observation paradigm that works with a collection of the abovementioned elements, to provide a way of observing information infrastructures and data movement in a chosen time frame. The user (human observer) is provided sophisticated controls and interaction mechanisms that will make it easier for them to detect computer network intrusion and critical security management events in real time as well as allow them to better analyze past events. Embodiments may include various combinations of a framework for 'intelligent agents'; an event handling system and a high-performance multi-layer observation facility presenting the user with a semantically dense depiction of an information source under consideration, such as a computer network.

Data processing and observation system

An observation sub-system is described wherein in three-dimensional (3D) views of objects and their interactions over time are provided. Each different view is based on a fundamental visualization paradigm. Heavily interacting objects can be depicted as being located 'close together'. Rules are created so as to define the position of objects not only from the perspective of whether interaction occurred, but also the amount of interaction, and the rate of interaction. Despite using proximity to show whether an object is interacting with another, further visual mechanisms are used for the user to be able to analyze the type of data interaction, and the current state of affairs of interaction within a specified time slice. There are two types of forces acting on objects in the data view universe, gravitational (as a result of the mass of an object) and electrostatic (as a result of the charge on an object).

Data view of a modelling system

A trusted path device is described which may be used stand alone or may be retrofitted to a users untrusted computer console or workstation so that an untrusted data input may be displayed on an untrusted display and verified by the user, following which the trusted data can be output to an untrusted or trusted device or network. The output may be encrypted or not, by means of an encryption device which may or may not use a 'one time pad' key provided from a structured array of retrievable &ldquo;one time pad&rdquo; keys having associated uniquely there with, a serial number which itself need not be encrypted but with which the input data and encrypted output data are uniquely associated. Sufficient &ldquo;one time pad&rdquo; keys are provided on a commonly available and physically manageable medium so as to allow much simplified key management procedures while still maintaining high levels of correctness and effectiveness of the encryption processes. Trusted devices as per ITSEC Level 6 may be used to implement the trusted path and encryption devices since the apparatus according to the invention are inherently simple in functionality thereby simplifying conformance with the relevant ITSEC and security equivalent requirements.

Growing community of inventors

Edinburgh, Australia

Damian Andrew Marriott