Data Protection Solutions for Unmanned Vehicles

Cigent solutions were designed and developed with and for US Intelligence and Defense communities. All employees, including Cigent software development, are based in the US. The team includes multiple personnel with TS/SCI clearance with decades of data protection and operational experience to support your requirements.

Cigent solutions have been tested and validated by leading Federal agencies including MITRE, NIST, NSA, NIAP, the Air Force, Cyber Resilience of Weapon Systems (CROWS), and NSSIF (UK) and are deployed across US Intelligence agencies, US Defense services, and the defense industrial base.

Unauthorized access to unmanned vehicle (UxV) data can have severe mission consequences. If an adversary gains access to UxV algorithms, they can:

• Exploit Automated Target Recognition (ATR) criteria to analyze and alter configurations, undermining UxV effectiveness.
• Compromise swarm coordination algorithms, using the knowledge to anticipate, disrupt, or develop countermeasures against automated responses.
• Degrade Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) accuracy, manipulating or studying algorithms used to maintain navigation and mapping in GPS-denied environments.

Cigent provides defense-in-depth protection for data at rest (DAR) through multiple, independently validated security layers designed to withstand advanced adversarial attacks in any operational scenario. AES-256 hardware full-drive encryption ensures FIPS compliance and adheres to TCG Opal 2.0 standards, with optional FIPS 140-2 Level 2 physical protections such as tamper-resistant epoxy coatings.

Cigent’s locked ranges isolate and protect defined segments of storage at the firmware layer, keeping them unreadable to cloning or forensic tools. Pre-Boot Authentication (PBA) enforces secure user verification before the operating system loads, preventing attackers from bypassing encryption during the boot process and ensuring data remains secure when devices are powered off or unattended.

Advanced Data Recovery (ADR) techniques, such as chip-off extraction, hex editing, and electron-microscopy analysis, aim to retrieve data directly from storage hardware. All Cigent SSDs employ AES-256 hardware encryption, ensuring that even if data is physically removed, it remains encrypted and indecipherable without the decryption key. The key itself is never stored in its entirety and any partial key material on the drive remains encrypted, preventing reconstruction or recovery by any means.

Beyond encryption, Cigent’s secured firmware hardens storage devices against sophisticated recovery and tampering attempts. Firmware is engineered to meet FIPS standards, NIAP Common Criteria FDE_EE, and CSfC DAR Capability Package 5.0 requirements, incorporating validated cryptographic algorithms, power-on self-tests, controlled error states, NIST-approved random-bit generation, evaluated hardware entropy sources, and tamper-evident protections to ensure full compliance and resistance to advanced threat vectors.

Cigent’s CSfC-aligned Data-at-Rest (DAR) solutions protects mission data through every stage of operation. Pre-Boot Authentication (PBA) ensures drives remain encrypted and inaccessible before system startup, while Cigent’s CLI utility manages the secure unlocking of defined storage ranges once the operating system loads, maintaining continuous protection without disrupting mission performance.

Drives can be segmented into independent, locked partitions, separating mission data, reconnaissance files, and system software. Each partition operates with its own access controls and can be relocked as needed, ensuring that only authorized users can access sensitive data during live operations. Even while in use, data remains shielded from cloning, modification, or unauthorized extraction.

Mitigating insider threats begins with precise access control and verifiable oversight. Cigent’s CSfC-aligned storage enforces user-based data access through secure partitions, ensuring each user can only access mission data specifically authorized to them. Multi-factor authentication strengthens control at the device level, preventing unauthorized access attempts and preserving data integrity across operational environments.

Cigent’s solutions also provide immutable access logging, capturing every authentication and data access event in protected system and firmware logs. These records can be securely exported to enterprise management or SIEM tools for continuous monitoring, analysis, and insider-threat detection, creating a complete, auditable trail of activity that enhances accountability and compliance.

Cigent enables complete and verifiable sanitization of mission data on unmanned and edge-deployed systems. When a UxV device reaches end-of-life, is repurposed, or faces emergency conditions, Cigent’s sanitization process provides a trusted alternative to physical destruction by ensuring all data is permanently erased and confirmed unrecoverable.

Crypto and Block Erasure delete the encryption keys and electrically clear every data block, rendering all information inaccessible. Verified Data Erasure performs firmware-level, block-by-block analysis to confirm that no data remains, automatically repeating the process until sanitization is complete. Sanitization commands can be executed locally, remotely, or automatically in response to defined triggers, such as loss of communication or a drop below a designated altitude, ensuring data is destroyed even in contested or disconnected environments.

An effective data protection strategy requires secure processes for system updates, maintenance, and lifecycle management. Cigent supports this through controlled maintenance operations across PCs, servers, and external media, ensuring that updates are applied efficiently and without compromising device integrity.

These controlled procedures reduce the risk of malware insertion, unauthorized data exfiltration, or data exposure in the event a compute device is lost or stolen. By maintaining strict control over update workflows, Cigent helps operators preserve mission assurance and sustain compliance with CSfC for Data-at-Rest protection requirements.

All Cigent Secure Storage provides AES-256 full drive hardware encryption with additional data protection to support unmanned vehicle operations.