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Mission-Support Deployment Certification Checklist

This checklist helps engineering teams prepare nats-sinks deployments for mission-support environments. It is an engineering readiness aid, not a legal, NATO, national, cross-domain, or accreditation certification.

Use it with public, synthetic evidence in project issues and release notes. Keep live deployment details, credentials, private endpoints, certificates, wallet material, operational subjects, unit identifiers, and payloads out of GitHub comments and documentation.

Area Control Level
JetStream stream Stream and consumer are explicitly configured, durable where required, and reviewed for subject scope. Required
Delivery model Commit-then-ACK behavior is preserved; no sink ACKs before durable success. Required
Idempotency Stable idempotency keys are defined and tested for redelivery. Required
DLQ Permanent failures publish to a configured DLQ before ACK, or redeliver when DLQ publication fails. Required
Replay Operators have a documented replay and duplicate-handling process. Recommended
Classification and labels Classification and labels are resolved by core metadata rules and stored where required. Required
Security labels Security label profile is configured when policy requires structured handling metadata. Recommended
Mission metadata Mission metadata validation is enabled where richer context is required. Recommended
Metadata profiles Named metadata profiles are used when deployments need fail-closed profile validation. Optional
Artifact references Large or external artifacts use references and hashes rather than unbounded embedded payloads. Recommended
Data quality Quality metadata is captured when downstream trust decisions depend on it. Optional
Payload encryption Payload encryption is enabled where storage policy requires it; key material remains external. Recommended
Sink encryption Database, filesystem, or object-store encryption is configured by the destination owner. Required
Authenticity Message authenticity verification is documented where producers sign events. Optional
Custody hashes Payload or artifact hashes are stored for tamper-evident review. Recommended
Review packages Review package writer, if used, is disabled by default and treated as evidence only. Optional
Observability Metrics and logs avoid payloads, secrets, raw subjects, and high-cardinality sensitive labels. Required
Secrets Oracle, NATS, and integration credentials are managed through a dedicated secret store where applicable. Required
Least privilege Sink credentials have only the permissions needed for configured writes and read-only diagnostics. Required
Retention Retention and deletion policy is documented outside the code and reflected in sink configuration. Required
Cross-domain boundary Any cross-domain transfer, sanitization, release decision, or guard behavior is external to nats-sinks. Required
External normalizers Tactical, media, C2, and tracking gateways own parsing, validation, authorization, and redaction. Required
Link 16 boundary No Link 16 terminal behavior, cryptography, network participation, or J-series semantics are implemented in core. Required
VMF boundary No VMF parser, encoder, bearer, gateway, K-series field catalogue, or tactical command logic is implemented in core. Required
MIP4-IES boundary MIP services, MIM validation, and semantic mapping are external. Required
NFFI / FFTS boundary Tracking protocols, terminal behavior, and precision policy are external. Required
FMV / KLV boundary MPEG-TS demuxing, KLV decoding, MISB parsing, and exploitation workflows are external. Required

Evidence Package

At minimum, keep sanitized evidence for:

  • configuration validation;
  • focused unit tests;
  • sink certification tests;
  • documentation build;
  • live or container-backed e2e tests where applicable;
  • DLQ and retry behavior;
  • idempotency and duplicate handling;
  • secret redaction checks;
  • release issue close-out comments.

Do not claim production suitability, operational accreditation, or standards conformance from this checklist alone.