ROME, N.Y., Sept. 26, 2006 – The Air Force Office of Scientific Research has agreed to underwrite an information assurance workshop planned by the Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate Jan. 12, 2007, in Bangalore, India.

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research’s Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development, with an initiative to increase involvement with India’s information technology inventiveness, has funding earmarked to support Asian-hosted technical conferences.

Dr. Kevin Kwiat of the Information Grid Division and Dr. Kaliappa Ravindran, a visiting professor with the directorate’s Assured Communications Research Center, are co-organizers and co-chairs  for the First Workshop on Information Assurance Middleware for Communications (IAMCOM).

“Communications middleware is software that acts as a mediator between an application and the network,” Kwiat said. “In this role, it manages the interaction between disparate applications and heterogeneous computing platforms.”

“When properly managed, diversity becomes a key ingredient for information assurance: a diverse computing environment can be a deterrent to attackers and gives resistance to a single common fault creating system-wide havoc,” he explained.

“Middleware is positioned to be the focal point for engineering distributed information systems that

tolerate attacker-induced faults and enable applications that depend upon the network infrastructure to survive,” Kwiat noted.

“Middleware research creates synergy between the techniques for fault tolerance and performance enhancement in communications – this is what IAMCOM is based on,” he said.

According to the workshop’s Web site, IAMCOM 2007 will offer a unique and focused forum for researchers from academia, government and industry to share ideas and disseminate new results in this important area.

Bangalore is the “silicon valley” of India, with a large contingent of computer information technology and communication industries – such as Microsoft, IBM, HP, Nokia, Dell, Google, CISCO, General Motors and Honeywell -- having a substantial presence there.

“Not only is the workshop ideally located from both the commercial and industrial standpoint,” Kwiat said, “but there is also a substantial amount of Indian Ministry of Defense-type research carried out in Bangalore-based government laboratories.”

“The activities of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) have a military significance too, and ISRO is headquartered in Bangalore,” he concluded. “Also, Bangalore is home to Hindustan Aeronautics – India’s sole military aircraft manufacturer.”