DSBlog

State and local fusion centers are evolving. Already at the forefront of ensuring the safety and security of citizens within their jurisdictions, many centers are now facing the twin challenges of broadening their ability to cope with all types of man-made and natural hazards while also adapting to a ‘regional risk assessment’ approach to critical infrastructure protection.

One byproduct of this evolution is a growing demand at the centers for detailed data on local assets and at-risk populations, and for an accurate picture of the response capabilities and resources at their disposal. More importantly, fusion-center analysts are increasingly being called upon to correlate, understand and quickly ‘connect the right dots’ amid vast amounts of disparate threat data in a way that allows them to prevent terrorist attacks, crimes and other adverse events in their areas of responsibility.

To help these analysts meet their expanding requirements, Digital Sandbox and i2 have partnered to deliver a revolutionary solution that seamlessly combines the unmatched risk analysis and monitoring functionality of our Risk Analysis Center (RAC) with i2’s powerful law enforcement and intelligence analysis capabilities.

Key features of this combined application include:

• A comprehensive assessment, management and monitoring capability that integrates law enforcement, intelligence and critical infrastructure risk data to give analysts a full understanding of their region’s critical infrastructure risk and preparedness;
• The ability to visualize and quickly identify broad threat patterns, and investigate and neutralize specific threats, by leveraging the i2 Analyst’s Notebook in combination with the RAC Intel Threat Monitor and geospatial displays;
• Automatically generated Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) with the subject’s geolocation data via i2 COPLINK (pictured, below), which are then evaluated using the RAC’s ‘what-if’ analysis tools to quickly identify activities that may pose a threat to critical infrastructure;
• Generation of threat-specific playbooks containing comprehensive risk-based profiles of targeted assets, using our Scenario Playbook Designer and i2’s data integration capabilities.

Together, i2 and Digital Sandbox are empowering fusion-center analysts by developing an end-to-end solution that covers everything from identification and assessment of assets to suspicious activity alerting and reporting to investigative response – an integrated suite of tools for critical infrastructure management, monitoring and threat analysis.

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Digital Sandbox is the leader in public safety risk management, providing analytic tools and information products to government agencies and large enterprises, for optimizing risk-based strategic, policy, and budgetary decisions.

For some time now, emergency managers and other security professionals have been expressing a need for immediate and continuous access to their key threat, asset, risk and preparedness information – even when they’re on the move.

Digital Sandbox ‘s R&D team has been working hard to turn this increasingly vital requirement into reality by developing a suite of applications called RAC Mobile, an anytime/anywhere version of our flagship Risk Analysis Center (RAC) suite.

Designed to work seamlessly with the RAC and intended for initial deployment on the Apple iPad and iPhone, RAC Mobile apps are now being developed to handle the following functions:

• Incident Command — accessing critical tools and information
• Special-Event Management— playbooks, event timelines and real-time situational awareness
• Security Assessments — user-friendly assessments without all the paper

Information accessible in the RAC Mobile suite will include situation reports, risk profiles, tear sheets and more. And with all their critical asset data integrated into a common operating picture (COP) app and displayed on a map, users will be able to filter the information by priority or sector — even by distance from their current location.

The RAC Mobile suite is intended as a core element of our upcoming RAC 6 product release, scheduled for this fall. But there’s no need to wait until then to try it out: we’ll be running RAC Mobile on the Apple iPad at the 2010 National UASI Conference in New Orleans next week. Stop by and see us at Booth 27 to get your own first-hand preview of its exciting capabilities.

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Digital Sandbox is the leader in public safety risk management, providing analytic tools and information products to government agencies and large enterprises, for optimizing risk-based strategic, policy, and budgetary decisions.

Ever wondered what the term ‘black swan’ means?

It refers to events so improbable that it’s hard to find a place for them in any probability assessment. Our friends at Wikipedia trace the term back to “the old world presumption that ‘all swans must be white’, because all historical records of swans reported that they had white feathers.”

Our June award for Black-Swan Scenario of the Month goes to rain-sodden Guatemala City. There’s a small factory somewhere down in that sinkhole. Fortunately the area had just been evacuated, and there were no reported fatalities. (Photo Credit: Flickr)

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Digital Sandbox is the leader in public safety risk management, providing analytic tools and information products to government agencies and large enterprises, for optimizing risk-based strategic, policy, and budgetary decisions.

Today the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee releases The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, one of 35 such measures in the works on Capitol Hill according the Federal Computer Week.

The legislation establishes that the country’s top two cybersecurity positions—one with a policy focus, the other focused on enforcement and protection—are confirmable by the Senate. But the most controversial aspect will certainly be a section conferring broad but vaguely defined emergency powers on the president.

The Act establishes the Office of Cyberspace Policy within the Executive Office of the President (EOP). The role of the office’s director will be to:

• Advise the president on all cyber security matters;
• Work with federal agencies and EOP offices to ensure the implementation of national strategy;
• Coordinate efforts by the various federal agencies developing regulations and standards applicable to the national information infrastructure; and
• Resolve any interagency disputes.

In addition, the Act establishes a National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC, aka “the Center”) within the Department of Homeland Security. The NCCC director will report to the DHS secretary, serving as principal advisor on cybersecurity and communications matters. The director will regularly advise the president on the enforcement of policies pertaining to the security of federal government networks.

As for those vaguely defined emergency powers, in the event the president determines there is a credible cyber threat to critical infrastructure and chooses to exercise his newfound authority, the NCCC director will issue emergency measures necessary to preserve the reliable operation of covered critical infrastructure – although the president is required to inform owner-operators affected by the threat as to what these emergency measures are.

Regardless, the ambiguous wording of this section makes it a good bet that the Act will draw the scrutiny of civil-liberties watchdogs and private industry alike.

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Digital Sandbox is the leader in public safety risk management, providing analytic tools and information products to government agencies and large enterprises, for optimizing risk-based strategic, policy, and budgetary decisions.

Part of Digital Sandbox’s Inside the Box series, our latest issue - The Data Paradox - is now available. Inside the Box represents our effort to share knowledge and spark conversation by taking a straightforward look at risk management and readiness, especially in light of today’s vital concern for public safety and asset protection.

In eight concise pages, The Data Paradox examines the challenge of managing today’s relentless data flow to stay ahead of breakneck decision cycles that inform risk readiness decisions. It also weighs the effectiveness of two primary approaches to analytics - data driven, and modeling and analysis - explaining which one we think best benefits decision makers, and why.

Here’s an excerpt:

No magic formula exists that will consistently give every organization the answers it seeks. But after more than a decade of listening to and serving those responsible for making decisions regarding the nation’s most critical risks, we have reached a firm conviction that the right data context – that is, the right selection, organization and presentation of data – can be a very powerful aid in making sound policy and business decisions, and in applying solutions quickly and affordably.

Click here to download The Data Paradox

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Digital Sandbox is the leader in public safety risk management, providing analytic tools and information products to government agencies and large enterprises, for optimizing risk-based strategic, policy, and budgetary decisions.

Early in 2009, the Obama administration issued a Presidential Memorandum directing the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to clarify when governmental outsourcing of services is, and is not, appropriate.

OMB wrote a Proposed Policy Letter, published in the Federal Register of March 31st, and has invited interested parties from both the public and private sectors to provide comments for consideration in the Final Policy Letter. The deadline is today.

Some key highlights in the letter include:

• Adopting the FAIR Act definition of “inherently governmental function” as the single government-wide definition of the term (FAIR Act definition: “an activity is inherently governmental when it is so intimately related to the public interest as to mandate [our italics] performance by Federal employees.”).
• Establishing guidance and “tests” to help agencies identify whether a function falls under the above-referenced definition.
• The letter includes examples of inherently governmental work, such as applying government authority or making value judgments for the government, such as monetary transactions.
• It also outlines tests agencies can use to determine whether or not it is appropriate to hire a contractor for the work.
• The “nature of the function test” would ask agency managers to consider whether the work under consideration would involve exercising the government’s sovereignty. If so, it should be deemed an inherently governmental function.
• The “discretion test” would have managers evaluate whether outsourcing the work to a contractor could effectively commit the government to a course of action.
• The letter states: “It is the policy of the Executive Branch to ensure that government action is taken as a result of informed, independent judgments made by government officials,” who are bound by law and are accountable to the president.

Comments can be emailed to OFPPWorkReserved@omb.eop.gov (write “Proposed OFPP Policy Letter” in the subject line); additional contact details are listed in the Federal Register notice.

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Digital Sandbox is the leader in public safety risk management, providing analytic tools and information products to government agencies and large enterprises, for optimizing risk-based strategic, policy, and budgetary decisions.