Sapphire 3.0 – New Capabilities

New Separate Product

Sapphire is the Isode SPIF (Security Policy Information File) Editor. Sapphire has been included in the M-Switch product as the “SPIF Editor” for several years. It is now offered as an independent product and can support several Isode products, including M-Switch, M-Vault, M-Link, Swift, and Harrier. It can also be used independently from other Isode products. The initial product version is set to 3.0 to make clear that it is not a new product.

Open XML SPIF 3.0

Sapphire stores SPIFs in the Open XML SPIF format (xmlspif.org· ). Earlier versions of Sapphire use version 2.1. Sapphire 3.0 supports Open XML SPIF 3.0. It will recognize 2.1 SPIFs and upgrade them to 3.0, making reasonable choices about how to do so. Careful review of upgraded SPIFs is strongly recommended.

Open XML SPIF 3.0 supports NATO Data Centric Security (DCS) capabilities, and changes relative to 2.1 were driven by experience from NATO trials. A number of detailed improvements were made, but the key changes focus on simplifying the approach to marking data and aligning it with modern usage.

STANAG 4774 and NATO DCS Support

Sapphire Label and Clearances can now be generated in NATO DCS formats specified in STANAG 4774. These are now the default formats used, but older label formats are still supported. Clearance Catalogs are generated in the format used by Isode tools. Label catalogs are generated in XEP-0258 format.

If you’d like to try out our new SPIF editor, Sapphire, you can fill out an evaluation form here.