General Collaboration and Information Sharing Portals
Cybercop – The Cybercop portal was designed to provide an ultra-secure web-based environment to promote and facilitate the sharing of sensitive information among a cohesive network of law enforcement, first responders, homeland defense and law enforcement related professionals from all levels of government, including international, federal, state, local and the private sector. Cybercop, an ESP-coined term, refers to computer forensic experts, law enforcement and emergency responders that use the Internet to collaborate and share information with one another. Due to various geographic, system, political and monetary barriers, these people oftentimes do not have a way to securely engage one another to share case information and to exchange best practices and lessons learned. As a result, The ESP Group created this secure portal which is committed to providing a safe and secure environment where ideas can be freely exchanged to aid individual efforts and to foster cooperative efforts in the fight against crime, terrorism and the security of the nation.
Extranet for Security Professionals (ESP) – Starting as a DARPA project in 1996, the Extranet for Security Professionals allowed for a secure web-based means to tie together all the government and commercial security professionals under a single platform. Until this new forum was designed, the security community never had the funding, manpower, or comprehensive technology to securely exchange information, best practices, lessons learned, policy documents and other sensitive information across all secure networks. The ESP now serves as a cross agency community of thousands of national security, intelligence, defense and law enforcement professionals engaged in operational and cyber security. Over 600 government and private sector organizations utilize the portal to coordinate activities and to collaborate on security issues.
Pentagon Force Protection Agency – The Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA) coordinates security for the Pentagon and Department of Defense interests and disseminates threat prevention, education and preparedness information within the region. The PFPA portal, which was established by the DoD after the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, serves as an out of band system that can support the Pentagon in case an event renders their existing infrastructure inaccessible. It allows law enforcement and emergency responders in the National Capital Region to quickly and securely disseminate threat information to the appropriate parties. The portal provides secure collaboration support for a wide range of Pentagon-related issues including terrorism, protests, suspicious activity, or area traffic flow and parking problems through tools like secure messaging, file sharing, threaded discussions, task tracking, calendar and scheduling, meeting coordination, security alerts and private web pages.
Project Management Portals DARPA – In order to get new technologies designed and implemented, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency must simultaneously engage competing contractors around the United States to compare designs, proposals and analysis to award contracts to the most deserving candidates. In order to do this, the government had to have accounts on various contractor networks in order to obtain the necessary information securely, which adds to the complexity of the contracting process by requiring multiple accounts for government officials as well as multiple places where documentation exists. In order to simplify this process, the ESP Group designed a Project Management Portal on which all competing contractors could obtain an account on the same system, and government officials could easily access the necessary information. With the strict need-to-know management controls in place, the contractors could never see each other or each other's data but could maintain a direct line of contact with government customers. The portal has been used for projects such as the Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV)-NAVY, the Organic Air Vehicle (OAV) and the Quiet Supersonic Platform (QSP).
Foreign National Visitor Tracking Portals
Department of Energy – The Department of Energy (DOE) asked The ESP Group to modify their Foreign National Visitor Tracking Portal to allow them to track all of the incoming foreign national scientists who visit DOE facilities to participate in research and development projects. Previously, each DOE facility maintained their own database, each with different data requirements, which made it difficult for the centers to interface with each other as well as with DOE Headquarters. This process also proved problematic when the DOE could not provide quick and accurate answers to congressional inquiries regarding the number of foreign nationals that were being hosted by DOE facilities at any given time. The portal that ESP designed for DOE tracks the relationship between the United States and the citizenship of the visiting country national, the reciprocal agreements between the countries, the biographical details of the visitor as well as the visit-specific details. The system also tracks the approval process from the initial investigation trigger for counterintelligence to the local security office check down to the program office concurrence. All of the information is then used to approve the visitor and to allow the front guard desk to view the person's approval information and host contact information.
Course Scheduling/Evaluation and Exercise Planning Portals
Office for Domestic Preparedness – The Office of Domestic Preparedness (ODP), a part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, provides training, equipment, exercises and assistance to first responders across the United States . When the ODP's paper process of scheduling training and answering inquiries about the training allocations being received by the states became too costly and cumbersome, they asked ESP to create an automated system that would abbreviate this process and become a secure extranet for ODP while they were on the road handling exercises and training. The new portal that ESP designed allows training partners to establish courses, allow states to register for classes and to allow the appropriate parties to approve training and monitor training sessions. The system also automates all of the course evaluations and follow-up surveys. ODP used the portal this year to help them conduct TOPOFF 3, which is the third exercise that is part of a congressionally-mandated weapon of mass destruction exercise series that brings together representatives from 19 federal agencies, the state of Washington , Illinois , Canada , the National Capital Region and the American Red Cross. The portal provided access to all the contact information for involved parties as well as gave participants access to secure collaboration tools such as secure messaging, document sharing and chat capability.
Secure Front End Portal
Office of Personnel Management – In support of its e-Clearance initiative, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) engages most of the U.S. government agencies to obtain new requests for clearance investigations and to allow agencies to monitor the status of investigations. In the past, OPM issued dial-up accounts and VPNs to the agencies in order to engage them securely, but this process has proved difficult to manage and costly to run. Thus, OPM asked ESP to create a secure front interface for customers to interact with the U.S. Government clearance databases run by OPM. This new portal provides encrypted access to existing OPM databases and permits clients to use a friendly web interface to manage the clearance request process. In addition to tying together the systems using a common, secure interface, the system allows OPM to maintain its legacy systems.
Pharmaceutical and Adverse Reaction/Bioterrorism Tracking Portals
Sentrx – Sentrx, Inc., a science and biotech company, delivers comprehensive solutions for clinical trial safety, post-marketing safety monitoring and risk management programs. Sentrx works with several of the top pharmaceutical companies to help monitor pharmaceutical studies. In need of a way to engage these organizations securely via the Internet to allow for easier interaction, Sentrx asked ESP to develop a secure portal which would enable them to collect highly sensitive information regarding data collection and analysis and to present the information securely back to the pharmaceutical companies.
Emergency Response Portals
Domestic Emergency Response Information Service (DERIS) – After the terrorist attacks in September 2001, the Office of the Secretary of Defense funded a project that could provide a secure collaboration and communication mechanism for first responders. The ESP Group responded by working with a consortium to develop a capability for DoD and FEMA to command and control their disaster response units during a domestic crisis. The portal provided real-time collaboration with external federal, state and local agencies involved in national emergency response. In addition to providing need-to-know controls and audit capability, the portal ensures that timely, accurate and secure information flows both vertically through the command chain and horizontally among government entities. |
