STIGNING

Infrastructure Domains

Strategic Infrastructure Domains

Domain capabilities are organized as institutional modules for infrastructure where reliability, protocol integrity, and security assurance carry material consequence.

01

Domain Catalogue

Domain 01

Post-Quantum Infrastructure

Technical Explanation

Migration architecture for hybrid and post-quantum cryptographic infrastructure across identity, transport, and key lifecycle systems.

Post-quantum transition is treated as a staged infrastructure program rather than a binary upgrade event. Implementation strategy prioritizes compatibility windows, cryptographic inventory accuracy, and measurable risk reduction.

Each migration path is modeled against data retention timelines, attack surface exposure, and operational dependence on legacy trust roots.

Problems Addressed

  • Long-lived confidentiality risk from cryptographic obsolescence.
  • PKI and certificate issuance models that cannot absorb hybrid algorithms safely.
  • Service identity fragmentation across legacy and modern runtime environments.

Engineering Depth

  • Hybrid key exchange and signature rollout design with backward-compatible trust transitions.
  • Certificate authority policy redesign and automated key lifecycle enforcement.
  • Protocol-level validation for handshake behavior, fallback controls, and downgrade resistance.

Typical Deliverables

  • Cryptographic migration architecture baseline and sequencing plan.
  • Hybrid trust model implementation blueprint with compatibility matrix.
  • Key lifecycle and certificate policy enforcement specification.

Domain 02

Distributed Systems Architecture

Technical Explanation

Fault-tolerant distributed architecture for services that must sustain correctness and availability under network and component failure.

System behavior is specified for degraded states before implementation details are finalized. The objective is deterministic recovery and bounded failure propagation.

Architectures are evaluated for operational clarity, not only throughput under nominal conditions.

Problems Addressed

  • Cascading failure across tightly coupled service boundaries.
  • Inconsistent state behavior under partition and replica lag.
  • Recovery procedures that restore uptime but not system integrity.

Engineering Depth

  • Explicit consistency model design and failure-state semantics.
  • Replication, leader election, and idempotency controls aligned with workload guarantees.
  • Load and failure testing frameworks that validate convergence and recovery correctness.

Typical Deliverables

  • Distributed architecture reference model with failure-state semantics.
  • Convergence and recovery validation test strategy.
  • Observability and incident containment control map.

Domain 03

Blockchain Protocol Engineering

Technical Explanation

Protocol-focused engineering for consensus safety, execution determinism, validator operations, and production hardening.

Protocol work focuses on invariants, fault tolerance, and operational trust assumptions. Engineering scope spans specification review, implementation behavior, and production enforcement controls.

Problems Addressed

  • Consensus implementation drift between specification and runtime behavior.
  • Validator and node operations vulnerable to misconfiguration and adversarial activity.
  • Incomplete observability for protocol-level anomalies and state transition faults.

Engineering Depth

  • Formal protocol review and deterministic state transition test harnesses.
  • Network behavior analysis for mempool, propagation, and reorganization handling.
  • Hardening controls for node lifecycle, validator key management, and upgrade coordination.

Typical Deliverables

  • Protocol invariants and implementation conformance assessment.
  • Deterministic state transition test harness design.
  • Validator operational hardening runbook and controls.

Domain 04

Secure IIoT Systems

Technical Explanation

Secure communication and identity architecture for industrial device fleets, gateways, and supervisory control environments.

IIoT security is engineered as an end-to-end system property across provisioning, runtime messaging, firmware lifecycle, and operational telemetry.

Architectural controls are selected to survive constrained compute, unstable links, and heterogeneous field deployments.

Problems Addressed

  • Weak provisioning pathways that allow unauthorized device enrollment.
  • Device-to-gateway communication lacking durable identity guarantees.
  • Firmware and update channels exposed to tampering risk.

Engineering Depth

  • Device identity lifecycle architecture with attestation and revocation controls.
  • Authenticated transport and message integrity controls across constrained networks.
  • Signed firmware delivery pipelines with verifiable provenance and rollback safety.

Typical Deliverables

  • Device identity and provisioning trust architecture.
  • Authenticated messaging and gateway segmentation model.
  • Secure firmware lifecycle and update integrity policy.

Domain 05

High-Performance Backend Platforms

Technical Explanation

High-throughput, low-latency backend architecture for critical data paths with strict reliability and observability requirements.

Performance engineering is scoped around sustained operational behavior, not isolated benchmark peaks. System design balances throughput, tail-latency stability, and recoverability.

Problems Addressed

  • Latency volatility under concurrent load and uneven traffic profiles.
  • Throughput bottlenecks caused by contention, I/O saturation, and queue imbalance.
  • Service-level objectives defined without instrumentation that can enforce them.

Engineering Depth

  • Runtime profiling and bottleneck isolation across network, compute, and storage layers.
  • Concurrency model refinement, backpressure design, and deterministic performance controls.
  • Telemetry architecture aligned to latency budgets and failure diagnostics.

Typical Deliverables

  • Latency and throughput baseline with bottleneck map.
  • Concurrency and backpressure architecture recommendations.
  • Performance SLO instrumentation and monitoring framework.

Domain 06

Mission-Critical DevSecOps

Technical Explanation

Security-first delivery and runtime governance for infrastructure requiring strict change control, traceability, and supply-chain assurance.

Delivery systems are treated as part of the attack surface. Control design emphasizes traceability, repeatability, and explicit security ownership across the full software lifecycle.

Problems Addressed

  • Build and deployment pipelines without artifact provenance guarantees.
  • Configuration drift that erodes security posture across environments.
  • Manual operational controls that do not scale under incident pressure.

Engineering Depth

  • Reproducible build systems with signed artifacts and verifiable attestation chains.
  • Policy-as-code enforcement integrated across delivery and runtime gates.
  • Immutable deployment patterns with controlled rollback and incident response instrumentation.

Typical Deliverables

  • Supply-chain assurance and attestation pipeline architecture.
  • Policy-as-code control matrix for CI/CD and runtime.
  • Immutable release governance and incident response playbook.