OPEN STANDARD BUILDING BLOCKS
A world class platform underpinning fissara for Connectivity, Security, Flexibility, Scalability and Productivity
THE BUILDING BLOCKS WE USE TO CREATE GREAT APPLICATIONS
BRIX is a service delivery platform that enables rapid development and deployment of business applications using pre-built building block components. At its core, is an open standards service driven platform, which can integrate applications and data without costly bespoke development. This SOA* (Service Orientated Architecture) platform provides a world class integration, communication and standardised environment which is scalable and flexible for future needs.
BRIX is defined as 7 KEY COMPONENTS that form the foundation on which all of fissara is built. As the modern world demands mobility of applications and data, fully integrated components create a fast and secure mechanism to develop mobile applications.
BRIX is not a large licence heavy software product that you buy and install, it is a basis that allows us to deliver your application and data requirements quickly and effectively.
BRIX provides a substantial capability delivering Security, flexibility, scalability and functionality, which in turn provide endless opportunities to develop and improve new business applications.
The benefit of BRIX to you
1. Low Cost – you are not buying a hefty software product that you have to make work – you are buying applications that address your issues, the platform is the underlying technology. Therefore, you have the platform ready for future developments.
2. Commercial Flexibility – the platform can be hosted by us and flexible pricing models, such as pay by usage or subscription based pricing may remove the barrier to entry for you and provide a manageable total cost of ownership.
3. Flexibility – using the library of components, which is always expanding, provides a flexible and cost effective mechanism to build further applications or integrate to data sources.
4. Security – security isn’t an addition, its integral. Ready-made policies will save you time and money and help safeguard your business’s key assets. Data Encryption, Secure Communications and Multi-Factor Authentication are out of the box.
5. End to end applications – BRIX provides the ability to build web and mobile applications, which share data and processes in real time. BRIX’s service bus engine also adds the power of integration processing power to provide further robustness and automation.
6. Integrated Mobility – mobile phones and tablets are part of our every day life. Encapsul8 provides a secure and rapid development environment and components, which fully integrates mobile applications into business processes.
7. Scalability – as your business grows, so can BRIX, it won't hold you back, security isn’t an addition, its integral.
8. Connectivity - BRIX provides a ready made SOA (Software Orientated Architecture) environment to deliver service orientated delivery in your business. BRIX's service bus, Mede8, can start to deliver integration, messaging and data transformation services quickly.
9. Fast, no very FAST Development – as many of the core components are in place, developing applications is straightforward and made easier with a library of pre-built components and applications.
10. Remote Sensors – not only have we developed embedded software but we have also built the circuitry that will integrate the central platform with remote sensors or machinery. This will save you time and cost and provide guaranteed connectivity.
*SOA – Definition: http://www.opengroup.org/soa/source-book/soa/soa.htm
INFIN8 - Application Libraries
formul8 is built using the INFIN8 libraries and is available on Google Play
ENABLING FAST DEVELOPMENT AND MODULAR DESIGN
Infin8 is a collection of ready to use functional libraries that can be readily adapted and configured to meet your requirements. Infin8 components have been carefully designed and developed as generic libraries to develop working applications rapidly.
Infin8 libraries are a mixture of UI components, workflows, mobile and web services that are pluggable into existing or new applications.
ENCAPSUL8 - Secure Mobile Container
SECURING MOBILE APPS IN THE ENTERPRISE
As mobility becomes a vital part of businesses connecting to their people, wherever they are, addressing the challenges of securing business assets, resources and data on mobile devices become critical.
In many cases companies will deploy a mobile device management (MDM) application to manage their remote devices. However, in some cases the mobile device needs to be locked down to provide a high level of security.
Encapsul8 provides an easy and ready to use, secure environment to protect enterprise apps and data. Layered security prevents, unauthorised access to an enterprises’ critical information and business processes, unauthorised downloading and installing of unspecified apps, and provides a secure communications channel to access the enterprise resources.
How it could apply to you
You need to build a secure mobile application that connects your IT systems to users while they are out and about.
Businesses can embed security policies that Encapsul8 will track, enforce and provide audit-able management information against. Using FIPS certified algorithms and NIST certified encryption techniques, Encapsul8 provides a robust, scalable and trusted environment for businesses to deploy their mobile strategies with confidence.
fissara is built using the ENCAPSUL8 Layered Security and is available on Google Play
SECUR8 - Universal Security
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Security should prevent unauthorised and untrusted access
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Security should be seamless
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Security should be bulletproof and easy to use both for users and to implement, enforce and audit
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Security should be layered and covered with chocolate
We made that last one up! But seriously, even though the requirements are universal, everyone's view may be different. One customer's view on security may vastly differ from the next because security obviously depends on the application or system that is being designed and developed - and when the commercial or the marketing team meets the IT Team, all worms come out of the proverbial can. We've all been there and done that.
CUSTOMERS’ REQUIREMENTS FOR INFORMATION SECURITY WITHIN AN APPLICATION OR THE ENTIRE SYSTEM ARE UNIVERSAL:
A step by step guide to SECUR8 ethos
Designing security systems is all about risk management and providing a level of assurance to whoever is going to use or approve it to use. There's no such thing as perfect security. As its known in the IT industry, A system's security is only as strong as it's weakest link. Secur8 helps us maintain a best practices approach to security in order to protect things - whether that's securing resources, unauthorised access or securing data.
Information Assurance Core Principles
Secur8 religiously abides by the core Information Assurance principles to ensure Data Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Authenticity and Non-repudiation. On some stringent systems all of those principles are implemented and tested periodically. We have knowledge and experience in the designing, developing and testing security systems to cover all of the above IA principles.
Our philosophy is to adapt to the customer's business processes to design and develop security into applications and systems. In some instances, we start from developing a threat model, designing conceptual security architecture and progressing the conceptual architecture by implementing standards based security techniques that covers the threat model and is engaging to use - and at no time alienating users.
As the project demands, we can utilise the entire suite of security products embedded in BRIX including:
Secur8 DAR for Data-At-Rest encryption, Secur8 DIME for Data-In-Motion encryption, Secur8 TRAC for device tracking and management.
We have experience in developing products that comply with public sector and private sector security and assurance standards. We have worked with information risk management specialists and testing companies to independently test security systems to go through appropriate public and private sector accreditation. Talk to us to find out more.
Some of the example techniques that Secur8 employs include Multi-factor authentication, data encryption, OTP (One-Time Password), point to point secure communications channel, digital signatures and combination of custom built hardware security device and software.
DEVICE MANAGEMENT
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Defining, enforcing and auditing device management policies OTA (Over-The-Air)
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Device Lockdown
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Remote device wipe
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Managing applications
DEVICE LOCKDOWN
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Utilising Encapsul8 or mobile device management (MDM)
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Locking down device with set of configurable policies
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Controlled environment for enterprise owned devices
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BYOD support
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User Profile Management
POINT-TO-POINT SECURE COMMUNICATIONS CHANNELS
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Mutually authenticated Point-to-Point communications channel
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Encrypted payloads
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Digitally signed transactions
OTP (ONE TIME PASSWORD)
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Standards based One Time Password
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Time based and Event based
IAM (IDENTITY AND ACCESS MANAGEMENT)
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Multi-factor Authentication
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Part of IAM is identify and authenticate users with a combination of factors to provide higher assurance of user’s identity i.e. something you know, something what you own and something you are.
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Access Control
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Authorising users to allow or restrict access to assets and resources based on their profile.
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Role based fine-grained access control
PUBLIC KEY CRYTOGRAPHY
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Integrating with existing PKI
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Rolling a custom turnkey PKI solution
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Asymmetric encryption
Secur8 goes back to basics and focuses on the fundamentals of security; to question and challenge in order to design a simpler security model that is both robust and usable.
In security, the simpler the model the higher the confidence in the design of the product. There's always a balance of security versus convenience versus features, so designing a good usable security model is difficult. Secur8 enables us to excel at designing simple security systems that keep users constantly in mind. We ask ourselves: if we were the end-user would we use it? If the answer is no, we fine-tune it until there's a unanimous vote for yes!
You need to build a secure mobile application that connects your IT systems to users while they are out and about.
How it could apply to you
You can find further information about our Security ideas here:
Or simply download our OMSA Mobile Data Security Guide
MEDE8 - The BRIX Service Bus
THE FAST EFFICIENT SERVICE BUS
In a networked and distributed computing environment, interoperability is the core of the Mede8. Integrating with applications and systems on a secure and consistent basis is the key performance indicator measure of any deployed system within an enterprise or cloud-based system. Mede8’s core competency is to provide a fast and efficient Message Routing, Data Transformation and Service Mediation engine that is one of the most interoperable available in the market today.
Mede8 is feature rich and built on scalable and modular OSGi* standards architecture that can scale up and down as necessary.
With BRIX’s Secur8 component, Mede8 provides a tried and tested security architecture and enables businesses to implement a mature identity and access management with role and policy based access control.
Mede8 integrates well in a heterogeneous environment and plays a role of centralised integration platform, streamlining business processes.
Mede8 supports industry standard communications mechanisms and transport without being a bottleneck and remains highly efficient in message processing.
How it could apply to you
You want to share data between several systems, maybe transforming data or applying some logic in the process, without continually building interfaces
You want a secure and fast mechanism to share data with your customers, suppliers or other external parties.
You have acquired a business and you need to integrate their applications quickly to avoid a slow down in business activity
(*The OSGi Alliance is a worldwide consortium of technology innovators that advances a proven and mature process to create open specifications that enable the modular assembly of software built with Java technology.)
QOREL8 - Management Console
UNIFIED VIEW AND CONTROL OFTHE SYSTEM AND YOUR FIELD TEAMS
Qorel8 is a web based management console interface that provides an easy to use and unified view of the system. Qorel8 delivers a consistent look and feel throughout, enabling users to be more productive on the tasks they want to perform. With the context aware nature of the application, Qorel8 provides helpful perspective to the users based on what tasks they have done and what they’d like to do next.
How it could apply to you
You need to see what your business is doing. You need an up to date sales dashboard, a view of the utilisation of your remote maintenance teams or an alert if there is an issue out in the field
You need to ensure that the system is intuitive and easy to learn and use, in order to maximize productivity
Qorel8 automatically correlates applications, users, devices and groups to provide a role based access control to business users.
Qorel8 integrates with BRIX’s Secure8 suite of security products to enable SSO (Single-Sign On), user/device authentication and authorisation.
Qorel8’s real-time metrics and analytics deliver customised data visualisation in the form of graphs and charts that provides unique insight into usage and performance data including predictive analysis.
Qorel8 is a modern and responsive web application that works on all modern desktop, smartphones and tablet browsers.
INTEGR8 - Systems Integration and Connectors
WORLD-CLASS INTEGRATION TOOLS AT YOUR DISPOSAL
Integr8 is a suite of tools and connectors that allow out of the box integration to existing enterprise infrastructure, database and identity based systems. With ability to connect to legacy back-end systems and presenting them into the service-enabled environment, Integr8 offers a system wide connectivity layer to the BRIX infrastructure.
Integr8 enables front-end clients (web and mobile applications) to interface with enterprise resources and data by using virtualising data sources, data transformation and providing industry standard transport layer support.
API's AVAILABLE:
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Job Creation – create an unallocated job in Fissara ready for scheduling
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Fault – create a fault in Fissara with a priority
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Create a new customer/site – useful for initial data miraton
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Job Status Updates:
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Latest expected completion time
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Job Started
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Job Completed – with outcome
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Job data - such as notes, pictures, form data
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Form data- data collected on a form
API’s are published as XML or JSON.
As well as API’s there are a number of downloads available in CSV, such as:
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Completed job Data
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Engineer activity data
Integr8 can convert enterprise data sources to web services, which can then be used by Mede8 for wider service integration
Integr8 utilises Secur8 suite of security tools to securely integrate with data sources by implementing fine-grained access and authorisation policies.
With ability to offer data transformation, Integr8 not only can connect to data sources but also provides powerful mapping between systems.
How it could apply to you
To integrate to fault and ticketing systems to seamlessly create jobs and assign engineers
To integrate with ticketing systems or your customer systems to provide job status updates
To enable real time business decisions you need to consolidate data from several different sources and provide a concise data view
To generate data collected in forms and integrate with other systems, e.g. site survey data integrated with ESOS efficiency analysis systems.
SENS8 - Remote Sensors
SMART CONNECTED INTERNET OF THINGS
Sens8 automates physical objects turning them into smart and interconnected objects. Sens8 is a combination software and hardware with sensor connectors designed to be deployed in a utility network and connect it securely to the central platform where settings can be monitored or alert alarms or faults can be automatically raised.
Consider the situation where faults are remotely monitored and engineers can be sent out – maybe even before your customer knows there is a fault. The opportunities for increased efficiency and cost saving are immense.
How it could apply to you
You need to securely connect with distributed assets and machinery, anywhere and any time.
You need to remotely monitor a number of sensors to check humidity, temperature etc. and automatically adjust heating controls dependent on certain criteria or raise alarms if issues are detected.
You want to reduce costs and improve customer service by identifying faults on remote equipment or assets and automatically raise a fault and schedule an engineer to fix the fault.
