Virtual Private Networks Application In Nuclear Regulatory Authority of Argentina

As the result of the existence of several regional delegations all over the country, a requirement was made to conform a secure data interchange structure. This would make possible the interconnection of these facilities and their communication with the Autoridad Regulatoria Nuclear (ARN) headquarters. The records these parts exchange are often of classified nature, including sensitive data by the local safeguards inspectors. On the other hand, the establishment of this network should simplify the access of authorized nuclear and radioactive materials users to the ARN databases, from remote sites and with significant trust levels. These requirements called for a network that should be not only private but also secure, providing data centralization and integrity assurance with a strict user control. The first proposal was to implement a point to point link between the installations. This proposal was deemed as economically not viable, and it had the disadvantage of not being easily reconfigurable. The availability of new technologies, and the accomplishment of the Action Sheet 11 under an agreement between Argentine Nuclear Regulatory Authority and the United States Department of Energy (DOE), opened a new path towards the resolution of this problem. By application of updated tunneling security protocols it was possible to project a manageable and secure network through the use of Virtual Private Networking (VPN) hardware. A first trial installation of this technology was implemented between ARN headquarters at Buenos Aires and the Southern Region Office at Bariloche, Argentina. This private net is at the moment under test, and it is planned to expand to more sites in this country, reaching for example to nuclear power plants. The Bariloche installation had some interesting peculiarities. The solutions proposed to them revealed to be very useful during the development of the network expansion plans, as they showed how to adapt the VPN technical requisites to the kind of real world shortcomings such remote sites present.