‘PSTgateways’ is a family of boundary protection devices. They are application-level gateways, which allow the secure transmission of information between networks located in two different security domains.

The PSTgateways systems provide real network separation by using two individual appliances (each one connected to one of the aforementioned networks). Each appliance acts as the communication end-point in its associated security domain. This architecture provides a complete break of the TCP/IP stack protocols.

The two appliances constitute the only communication path between the internal (high security domain) and the external network (low security domain). The communication between them is performed through a passive data transfer device which is part of the PSTgateways technology.

All PSTgateways systems share a common architecture and a common base software (PSTgateways Framework) but differ in the set of ‘data flow services’ (or simply ‘services’) that they support. Each service supports the transfer of a type of information (e.g.: file transfer, e-mail, etc.), using standard protocols to communicate with both data networks. The services are completely independent from each other, and when possible offer a one way data flow.

All services are organised into channels, allowing independent and parallel handling of multiple data flows with individual settings per channel.