A successful one-way data transfer requires meeting the expectations of a two-way world. A majority of network traffic involves some sort of acknowledgement or two-way connection in order to function. The “secret sauce” of Owl Talon is in providing a secure one-way transfer, with a true separation between source and destination networks, while maintaining simultaneous, two-way communications with both the source network and the destination network to avoid disruption. This is accomplished through using proxies that run on each side of Owl data diodes.
The send side proxy communicates with the source network acknowledging receipt of packets before extracting the payload and sending it across the diode. On the receive side, the proxy receives the payload, builds a new packet around it using the original protocol and sends the data on its way over the two-way protocol. In this way, the data diode achieves a secure one-way transfer in the middle of two, two-way exchanges.