You may know what a “Diode” is, and you may have come across the expression “Data Diode” in recent years. But what is a Data Diode really? And how can you benefit from it? Let’s take a look at the concept and find out.
The rectifier
Anyone familiar with electronics knows that a diode rectifies alternating current into direct current. It simply cuts the negative part of the cycle and lets the positive part go on. You may say it’s like closing your ears while opening your mouth to speak. The current of human language just goes one way. You may also recognize the same function in a check valve in your house, where water should flow one way but not the other. That’s the basics of rectifying, and that’s the core function of a diode.
The first electronic diodes were made from vacuum tubes a hundred years ago. After WWII, the element Germanium (Ge) became the material of choice, later to be replaced by the famous Silicon (Si), which in turn is the base for all modern electronics in our digital world.
So, the diode has a long history, and nowadays it’s a commodity.
But how can the function of a Diode be applied to Data? You’ll see!
Rectifying Data?
Why would anyone want to rectify data? Isn’t the flow of data the basis of communication? Well, you’re right. It is! But the flow is also a threat, allowing harmful data to enter your systems and interfere with your correct and secured data. Surely you want to protect against this. You want data to be transferred to the user, but not the other way around. And here’s where the Data Diode comes into play.
A Data Diode guarantees safe one-way data transfer by only allowing data to travel in one direction – just like the electronic diode above did with the current. The Data Diode separates your secured side, where your systems are, from the not-so-secure side, where your users may be.
The Data Diode performs this separation by isolating the secure side from the not-so-secure side galvanically, which means there are no electronic connections between the two sides. No copper cables, no steel cables, no iron cables. The Data Diode uses fiber optics to enable the flow of data from the secure side to the not-so-secure side.
So, you see, we’ve made a Data Diode, and it rectifies data exactly as you want it to, protecting your secured data and your secure systems.
But what about communication then?
Now you may wonder: aren’t the systems designed for communication and in need of responses? And how would they get responses if the data flow is rectified?
Well, you’re perfectly right. Many systems need some kind of response, some kind of acknowledgement that the data sent has been received correctly. But there are less demanding systems, and those systems rely on the communication protocol UDP (User Datagram Protocol).
When using UDP, the communication is said to be stateless, meaning that there is no acknowledging communication between the sender and the receiver. The flow of data goes on in one direction without any receipt from the receiver to the sender that the data has arrived. This is perfect for streaming video and sound, for example, and as the quality of the transmission network increases, the error rate of data transfer decreases and the need for error correction also decreases. In these cases, a Data Diode is the most protective action you can take.
For other systems, where there is a need for more intense communication between the user and the systems, UDP is not enough. UDP doesn’t meet the requirements, so we need TCP (Transmission Control Protocol). But since the rectifier, the Data Diode, doesn’t provide two-way communication, we need to enable this communication in another way that is as secure as the Data Diode. Here is where the Data Diode Middle Ware (DDMW) fills the gap – which we will talk about in the next White Paper.
Summing up
Now you know more about the basics and the concept of the Data Diode. Since we launched our first Data Diode in 2006, we’ve seen an increasing demand for cyber security. First came the Defense industry, followed by the Energy industry, and now we see the Financial industry, the Medical industry – well, almost all industries – taking an interest in the concept of Data Diodes. And as the concept develops continuously, we look forward to new applications such as USB Data Diodes, Ethernet Data Diodes, RS-232 Data Diodes, etc.
In short – we will see more Data Diodes!
So, to learn more about our Data Diode products, please find out more here or give us a call, as we are happy to listen to your requests and tell you more about the concept of the Data Diode.
You may download this White Paper as a PDF file here
