Welcome to the Council's Digital Library!  Here you will find white papers and other substantive pieces by the Council's member companies and documents related to the private sector in homeland security.  Simply click on the title of the document to read it in its entirety.  If you have an item that you would like listed here, please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for consideration.

Airport Security Solutions
4D Security Solutions
Current airport security is usually comprised of fragmented systems at the perimeter, in terminals, and at checkpoints, which give rise to distinct solutions with no communication among them. Furthermore, aviation related systems, which may have security relevant information, are completely segregated. This state of affairs precludes the possibility of assembling one complete security picture; it also creates inefficiencies, duplication and unnecessary redundancy in terms operators and workload. To create one unified airport security solution, an integrated holistic approach is required.

Customs 2020: A Business and Technology Point of View
Accenture
Customs agencies, long seen as a steward of a nation’s trade and borders, are under pressure like never before.  This pressure is arriving simultaneously on many fronts, requiring Customs to perform at the highest levels to facilitate legitimate trade while protecting its nation’s citizens from an ever-growing and dynamic litany of threats.

Protecting Society, Easing Global Travel: Enabling High Performance for Immigration Agencies
Accenture
Today, immigration agencies around the world face a myriad of challenges including helping to prevent terrorism, people trafficking and illegal migration, while responding to travelers’ demands for faster, simpler transit. Citizens demand transparency and efficiency, yet insist on safety. Faced with the additional pressures of an ever- increasing volume of travelers, scarce resources, growing concerns about privacy, and facility and infrastructure limitations, many agencies struggle to cope with the existing, let alone future, demands placed upon them. Facilitating immigration while improving security has never been more daunting.

Mission Resilience: The New Imperative for High Performance in Public Service
Accenture
This Accenture point of view examines resilience as it applies to public service agencies. What can they do to more systematically anticipate, monitor, minimize, recover from and even prevent small and large disruptions? In the following pages, we look closely at what it takes to implement a formal mission resilience capability; the benefits that improved resilience can deliver; and how public service decision makers can begin to improve their agencies’ mission resilience and enable high performance.

Transforming Global Border Management
Accenture
Today’s border management agencies are challenged like never before. Globalization and the threat of terrorism have ushered in a climate that demands high performance and total responsiveness—every time. The need for ever more efficient, rapid and open movement of travelers and goods coincides with heightened demands for more secure traveler and cargo identification before, at and within a country’s borders without compromising an individual’s basic rights and privacy. Working with global border management agencies, Accenture has developed a comprehensive approach to address these challenges. This vision combines people, processes and technology in new ways to help enable agencies to keep a country, its trade, its visitors and its citizens safe and secure while promoting economic stability and growth. Around the world, we are applying this vision to support border management agencies in transforming their operations to enable the simple, efficient movement of goods and people while preventing threats from crossing the borders.

Managing hurricane risk in the Gulf of Mexico
ABS Consulting
The 2004 and 2005 Gulf of Mexico hurricane seasons expanded the traditional definition of risk and asset management for the oil and gas industry. At the most important level, the industry did an excellent job of protecting the lives of people directly involved in operations. In addition, in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the industry expended an extraordinary effort in getting assets back on line. In spite of these efforts, both hurricanes had a significant financial impact on the performance of the industry due to the extensive asset damage, production loss and market disruption.

Using Risk-Based Process Safety in Contractor Selection
ABS Consulting
As companies continue to leverage their resources on an ever-wider range of products and services, the number of projects (and contractors) managed will drive the need for a standard approach to contractor selection.

Beyond disaster recovery: becoming a resilient business
IBM
As you probably understand all too well, today’s business environment is characterized by rapid, unpredictable change. Some changes bring opportunities for your business, while others bring challenges and sometimes even threats. But no matter what, your business has to be responsive and resilient— seamlessly taking advantage of opportunities while mitigating risks. Your IT infrastructure must be designed to help ensure the continuity of your business operations in the event of an unexpected disruption, and to secure data integrity. It also must help you comply with government regulations and integrate risk strategies to reduce costs, and it must be able to scale rapidly and automatically as the marketplace changes.

The Challenge of Contracting for Large Complex Projects: A Case Study of the Coast Guard’s Deepwater Program
IBM
The U.S. federal government is increasingly acquiring products that have qualities that cannot be easily and clearly defined in advance and that are difficult to verify after the product or service has been delivered. These products are called complex products.

Delivery of Benefits in an Emergency: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina
IBM
This report focuses on the delivery of emergency financial benefits. These include payment of existing benefits delivered at a time of crisis, such as pensions, Temporary assistance for Needy Families (TaNF), and Social Security, as well as payment of emergency benefits relating to the disaster, such as emergency food stamps, unemployment insurance, and emergency cash assistance. This report seeks to build on the Katrina experience and on other avail- able models to show that it is within our reach to build an effective emergency benefits delivery system. Many parts of the infrastructure available for payment of existing benefits are also needed to ensure effective delivery of emergency benefits.

Strategic Risk Management in Government: A Look at Homeland Security
IBM
This report is focused on strategic risk management, which is the process by which decisions are informed by an analysis of risk. Risk management, as defined by the Department of Homeland Security, is the “process of identify­ing, analyzing, assessing, and communicating risk and accepting, avoiding, transferring or controlling it to an acceptable level at an acceptable cost.” Risk management can be applied at several levels: tactical risk management, operational level decisions, and strategic risk management.

Justice and Public Safety: Fight Crime and Terrorism More Effectively
Oracle
Increasingly, government agencies are realizing that information technology provides a powerful weapon against crime. With more than 30 years of experience working on security issues, Oracle is the undisputed leader in helping justice and public safety organizations achieve their vital missions.

ICE's Cyber Crime Center Uses Case Management to Streamline Processes and Share Information
Oracle
Using a unified case management solution, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can now collaborate with law enforcement officials throughout the country, contributing to the arrest of more than 5,400 child sex predators and the deportation of another 2,100 predators last year.
Using Oracle's CRM products, database and related portal development tools, ICE combats crimes committed online and electronically, providing a new avenue through which to pursue criminals, predators and child pornographers.  ICE is just one example of a federal organization striving to comply with regulatory mandates such as the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA), designed to promote government-wide performance improvements, the President's Management Agenda (PMA) and Electronic Government (E-Gov). Tight budgets, growing constituent expectations and stricter security requirements are forcing federal audiences to search for ways to deliver better, faster information access, along with streamlined, secure performance and the ability to measure the effectiveness of key operational processes.

Siebel Public Sector Solutions for Justice and Public Safety
Oracle
Anticipating and responding to security threats requires government agencies to overcome barriers to sharing information. Siebel Public Sector solutions for justice and public safety leverage proven technology to solve complex challenges in information sharing and communications.  Addressing threats to security has become the single most important challenge facing  governments today. Anticipating and responding to these threats requires government agencies to share information-not only within individual agencies, but also among the dozens of national, regional, and local agencies involved in homeland security.  Oracle's Siebel Public Sector solutions for justice and public safety provide an extensive set of solutions to help governments solve these challenges, while, at the same time, accommodating ever changing organizational and legal restrictions. The solutions enhance cooperation among the employees within an agency, but also improve the flow of information among multiple agencies.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5: I/O Tuning Guide
Red Hat
The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 I/O Tuning Guide presents the basic principles of performance analysis and tuning for the I/O subsystem. This document also provides techniques for troubleshooting performance issues for the I/O subsystem.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5: Power Management Guide
Red Hat
This document explains how to effectively manage power consumption on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 systems. It discusses different techniques that lower power consumption (for both server and laptop), and how each technique affects the overall performance of your system.

Understanding Virtual Memory in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
Red Hat
This whitepaper provides users with useful insight in understanding, tuning and monitoring virtual memory in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.

Remote Graphical Installations Using VNC
Red Hat
This Fedora how-to instructs users on how to perform a graphical installation over a remote connection using virtual network computing (VNC). The procedures herein are also applicable to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

A Platform-Based Approach to Public Security
SAP
When investigating crime, terrorism, fraud, and incidents, do your investigators face complexity in terms of data, information, content, processes and accountability? SAP for Public Sector supports the management of such investigations improving productivity, quality, efficiency, and effectiveness.

Collaborative Outcomes in the Public Sector: Processes and Architecture
SAP
Take an in-depth look at how the collaboration that takes place between government agencies can be codified and automated to improve public value - and preserve best practices as staff and employees move on. Learn how SAP's business process platform supports collaborative outcomes and protects existing investments in IT.

Homeland Security and Homeland Defense IT Solutions
Serco
Serco provides adaptable solutions to the Department of Homeland Security that help equip the federal government with the necessary resources to prepare for and combat continually evolving threats.

METHODS TO PROVIDE SYSTEM-WIDE ADS-B BACK-UP, VALIDATION AND SECURITY
SRA
A major part of the business case for Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast (ADS-B) is attributed to the savings generated by decommissioning or reducing reliance on conventional radar systems. In order to maintain some form of redundancy, a networked, systemwide back-up and validation approach is required.  During the transition to end-state surveillance architectures, there will likely be a mixture of various types of surveillance sources including primary surveillance radar, secondary surveillance radar, multilateration, and ADS-B. This paper describes an integrated approach to the surveillance architecture and one means for facilitating the application of multiple surveillance sources.  Surveillance sensor performance is based on the categories defined in ADS-B standards. The relevant parameters are Navigation Accuracy Category (NAC), Navigation Integrity Category (NIC), and Surveillance Integrity Level (SIL).  These standards have been adapted to create a generic surveillance performance categorization method. This method would enable air traffic service providers to develop criteria for combining information from multiple surveillance sensors. The categorization also enables a method for defining the associated aircraft separation requirements.

Maximize the use of your HSM 8000
Thales
Well designed and integrated security solutions are business enablers, not just IT infrastructure costs. Traditionally most banks and processors/switches use their payment hardware security modules (HSMs) almost exclusively for transaction processing. Increasingly Thales HSM 8000 customers are taking advantage of optional firmware features to maximize their investment. This delivers stronger security across a wide range of business needs, such as remote payment channels, data security, EMV card issuing and the emerging contactless card and mobile applications designed to replace low value cash payments. In today's competitive environment, banks that recognize how strong security can be a differentiator are gaining competitive advantage and ultimately market share. This paper provides a high level overview of selected features available on the HSM 8000 platform. It explains how they can help in both reducing operating costs and enhancing existing or launching new authentication services to combat the growing threat of cardholder not present (CNP) fraud.

FISMA: More than Just POA&M Reporting
Telos
The passage of FISMA has resulted in an extensive set of NIST regulations for IT risk compliance and assurance. Some agencies are taking a very narrow view of FISMA by focusing on its periodic reporting requirements through the completion of basic Plans of Action and Milestones (POA&M), perhaps because OMB has threatened to withhold funding for projects when agencies fail to report properly.  But FISMA is really much more about security management than it is about POA&M reporting. The bigger FISMA picture includes NIST's development of standard controls, processes, and guidance for certification and accreditation (C&A), or risk management and security management in general. In their consideration of FISMA reporting tools, agencies should be sure to look beyond "mere reporting" to address other aspects of FISMA compliance.  Many recently developed FISMA reporting tools are informal government/contractor collaborations that require continuous care and feeding to ensure future lifecycle support is maintained. On the other hand, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products are more formalized in their development and support methods. When considering any softwarebased solution, agencies should be sure to examine the long-term viability and professional support structures of all potential solutions. Several offerings in the market have informal, ad-hoc product development and support methods that lack a long-term plan and require very expensive, on-site consultant engagements to support their application. In the long run, it is more effective to procure a COTS offering that has a proven support track record.

A secure scenario-layered integration of biometric-based identification
Unisys
Unisys is working with a number of universities, companies and customers to integrate leading-edge enhancements to improve recognition solutions for access control at our borders, our airports, and to our infrastructures that support transportation, banking and finance, communications, power grid and government services. As an integrator, combining these advancements in technology to meet specific business needs offers interesting challenges and exciting opportunities - to prevent unauthorized access, reduce the need and costs for physical entry control personnel and helpdesk support.  This white paper outlines security issues we face today, and how layering biometric identification technologies can create a more secure information system or critical infrastructure. It also shows how by partnering with our customers, vendor-suppliers and talented engineers across the company Unisys is helping to turn the visions of today into the realities of tomorrow. A safer, more secure world.

The Private Sector Needs to be Prepared — for Swine Flu and Other Crises
By Scott Weber
Corporate America needs to be prepared for all hazards, all the time. The private sector owns 85 percent of the nation’s critical infrastructure and the government simply cannot protect it all –nor should it be expected to.

Cyber Security & Waiting for Godot
By Scott Weber
The continued and growing reliance on networked operations, wireless systems and the globalization of information make a cyber attack a growing concern for the private sector and government. Cyber attacks of computer systems and telecommunication networks are highly developed and increasingly used as a way to gain an advantage in the commercial sector, as well as a viable tool for terrorists seeking to cause economic destruction and ways to fund their operations.  As business trade secrets and customer information become more vulnerable, it is clear that the public can wait no longer for cyber security standards.

Cyber Warfare & the United States – A Call to Arms
By Scott Weber
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and the Obama Administration should press the United Nations to join the 21st century and address head on the issue of cyber warfare.  Article 51 of the U.N. Charter provides that a country has the right to engage in self-defense when it suffers an armed attack.  The extent of such a response is guided by the Geneva Conventions and their attendant protocols, which define, among other things, the ways that a war may be fought and the protection of individuals.  These protocols also provide measures that can be taken to prevent or end “grave breaches,” defined as “willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment . . . willfully causing great suffering . . . and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.”  But what about cyber warfare?

A New Construct for Corporate Security
By Scott Weber
Corporate America has intensified its efforts to detect, prevent, and mitigate terrorist attacks.  As part of that effort, many corporations, in good faith, hire outside consultants to review and make recommendations on ways to improve security.  However, a company’s best efforts to protect its facilities and provide a safe and secure working environment for its employees may ultimately result in increased liability.