What We Do

Fortress Technologies, part of General Dynamics C4 Systems, delivers a high performance portfolio of COTS wireless and secure communications capabilities, based on industry-proven technology. Fortress products and technologies are enhanced with the highest levels of industry-standard encryption that conform to commercial and government security standards and meet stringent environmental standards to support tactical wireless communications in austere environments for global defense, critical infrastructure and enterprise users.

Leveraging a self-forming, self-healing, path-optimizing mesh architecture, the Fortress advanced wireless network solution is optimized for rugged-outdoor, mobile, military, first responder and critical infrastructure environments, where reliable communications are a must.

Fortress secure wireless networking products and embedded solutions are designed for ease of use, simple integration and technical insertion, enabling partners and customers to meet their most challenging wireless communications needs. For more information, visit www.gdfortress.com

Fortress is the leader in providing secure wireless infrastructure for the highly mobile, rugged outdoor military environments.  Today, Fortress infrastructure is the backbone of the DOD's largest wireless networks deployed around the globe.

Fortress History

Fortress was founded in 1995 with the goal of providing secure, yet easy to use, encryption hardware and software.  Fortress acquired a number of patents in this area.  Fortress was an early adopter of the original FIPS-140-1 security standard and the subsequent FIPS-140-2 standard.  Fortress' first FIPS-140 certificate is number 33.  In 2004, Fortress acquired Legra Systems, a Boston area wireless LAN (WLAN) startup.  Subsequently, Fortress delivered to the market, high performance FIPS inline network encryptors and a family of secure mesh products designed for the highly mobile, rugged tactical military market.

In 2005, the NSA announced a set of cryptographic algorithms, termed Suite B, for use in protecting classified communication.  In 2006, through a strong partnership with Certicom, Fortress incorporated the Suite B algorithms into the entire Fortress product Suite.  In 2009, the Department of Energy’s (DOE)  Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) awarded Fortress Technologies a strategic contract to develop a series of 802.11 wireless network components. These components can be integrated into a layered solution to meet the security requirements mandated by the National Security Agency (NSA) for classified wireless data transmission up to the secret level. This initiative provided wireless sensor communications to the Savannah River Site, where cabling and Type 1 solutions were too costly and burdensome.  

Fortress Today

Today, Fortress is the leading provider of outdoor wireless infrastructure for the US Department of Defense. Fortress outdoor mesh points are globally deployed in support of the US Army Combat-Service-Support Automated Information Systems (CAISI) program.  CAISI is the DOD's largest outdoor wireless deployment and the world's largest logistics deployment.  Fortress mesh points also provide the backbone for US Army RFID-III, the world's largest RFID deployment. 

Fortress and General Dynamics

In July 2011, Fortress technologies was acquired by General Dynamics and now operates as a subsidiary to the C4 Systems division of General Dynamics. The acquisition of Fortress accelerates General Dynamic's ability to deliver a wider array of secure, Wi-Fi-based tactical wireless communication systems for military and government users worldwide

COTS+

Since its inception, Fortress R&D has focused on applying COTS technology to meet the needs of the DOD.  We have long prided ourselves on focusing 100% of our efforts in solving the difficult 20% of problems that COTS solutions do not address. This COTS+ approach provides the highest value, lowest risk, to our customer.  Fortress products are unique because they have been designed, manufactured and assembled entirely in the USA. Fortress products use custom-designed FPGA-based hardware cryptographic engines to provide the highest performance, lowest power consumption and highest level of assurance. Fortress products incorporate high performance, low-noise printed circuit boards (PCB's) and radios, designed in-house to achieve the highest RF performance possible.  All our outdoor mesh points combine low-power design, conduction-cooling (without any moving fans) and have been validated to provide extended operating temperature in harsh desert environments while maintaining Mean-Time-Between-Failures (MTBF) of over 100,000 hours or 11 years of continuous operation.

Our products' enclosures are designed and built in-house purpose-built to be meet the rugged performance our

DoD customers expect.  Our products are independently tested and validated to ensure performance in compliance with MIL-STD-810G, MIL-STD-461, MIL-STS-1275, extended temperature ranges and IP67.  

Fortress has successfully demonstrated performance under a number of Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) and DOD grants for developing technologies for DOD applications. aaa