By Geoff Fein
The Space and Naval Warfare Systems (SPAWAR) in San Diego recently signed a three-year Cooperative Research Agreement (CRADA) with Ohio-based Sypherlink to find ways to rapidly share information across hastily formed secure data networks, a company official said.
Since the company started back in 2001, Sypherlink’s focus has been information sharing, James Paat, CEO, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“We are leveraging some secure communications and rapidly deployed infrastructure, with Sypherlink’s NIEM (National Information Exchange Model)-based data management infrastructure, and the ability now for the two capabilities to work across multiple needs and multiple industries, whether it is responding to national disasters where we need to come in and lay the communications infrastructure for logistics…for rebuilding areas,” he said.
There are multiple pieces to being able to share data across multiple networks, Jim Fallin, a SPAWAR spokesman, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“One just has to do with the technology piece. The CRADA and our work with Sypherlink, and a multitude of others, goes to how do you marry up systems that don’t normally work together and ensure some sort of a repository or conduit that allows for these different sort of systems to link up,” Fallin said.
For SPAWAR, the challenges are identifying those shared systems, determining what the common frameworks are and is there a way that different systems can still join up on a network and still be able to communicate with each other without having to make huge purchases or investments, Fallin added.
“If there is an ability out there for the development of these common frameworks or architectures that allow different systems to come in, and then be unified under particular protocols, then you’ve just done some cost avoidance for one, and two, you’ve allowed for this unification of communications,” he said.
Because of the uncertainty of knowing what kind of information is going to be required to make the best decisions for specific types of events, the goal again, Paat said, is a rapidly hastily formed data management infrastructure.
“So that whether it is maps, data, whatever types of information, the infrastructure is in place to get access to the data, know where the data sits, and securely gain access to reliable information,” Paat added.
The CRADA was signed in the April time frame, he said.
Paat added there were challenges “all over the board.”
One of the big challenges, even if the communications infrastructure is in place, is the ability to know where data sits across these multiple data bases,” Paat explained.
“Keep in mind that each of these data bases, how they hold data, how they store data, is very different. So the ability to know where data sits and know how to get to data across multiple system has always traditionally been a challenge,” he said.
“On the technical side, where we are focused in on is leveraging our technology (Sypherlink’s patented automated mapping technology) and our domain expertise and leveraging this NIEM standard to build a series of map templates so we know where data sits and how to get access to it if required,” Paat said.
NIEM is the standard driven by the Department of Justice (DoJ) and Homeland Security (DHS) and designed to set the guidelines and framework for any type of data sharing or intelligence initiatives across all state and local government sectors, Paat said. “It also spans into multiple domains, so any type of information whether it’s law enforcement, whether it is courts, health…public safety, all of that can be leveraged with the NIEMS standard.”
Paat acknowledged it’s been a challenge to map all the data out, given the different federal, state and local agencies that could be involved in a response to a disaster or threat. “NIEM, being a national standard helps quite a bit.”
There have been several efforts underway, he noted, separate initiatives trying to create these maps for their own respective agencies. For example, the DoJ had an effort called the Regional Data Exchange. It is now called OneDoJ. The goal of the DoJ effort is to link together agencies so they can share information, Paat said.
“With NIEM, the goal isn’t to rip and replace all of these past data sharing efforts. The goal is to drive synergy and interoperability between any of these initiatives,” he added. “Without having a standard like NIEM, it is very difficult to have interoperability across multiple initiatives, across multiple regions of the world. The NIEMS standard is a very very important aspect. We are looking to leverage this [to] make this into a reality as quickly as possible.”
Paat said a demonstration of Sypherlink’s efforts would happen as early as possible.
“We are working aggressively now to identify what the first types of pilots might be. You’ll see something long before the three-year agreement (wraps up), that’s for sure,” he said.