 |
 |
 |
 |
| |
|||||
|
|
|
Home > News & Events > MITRE Publications > The MITRE Digest > | |||||||||||||||||||
Secure Instant Messaging Translates Into NATO Success Story September 2002
Military actions today often involve multiple countries working together against a rogue nation or factional force. To prepare for such events, members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) regularly practice carrying out coalition-based military actions. MITRE supported recent NATO exercises by making it faster and easier for members to communicate with each other during maneuvers. NATO currently has 19 full members and is expecting to add more soon. NATO also has several ongoing coalition operations with non-NATO nations, such as its Partners for Peace program. NATO's increased strength brings greater opportunities as well as greater challenges. For example, today's conflicts often happen quickly, not giving nations much time to amass forces, plan campaigns, and share information. Events unroll quickly and communications must keep up. Ideally, NATO participants in different countries should be able to interact instantly, securely, and in a language each individual understands. "Collaboration Techniques for Coalition Teams" (CT2), an innovative MITRE research and development project, provided just that kind of interaction during NATO's military exercise, Strong Resolve 2002, held this spring. Communicating Across Boundaries Every four years, NATO concludes a cycle of training and planning with a massive military exercise. This year's exercise was perhaps the most ambitious yet. Strong Resolve 2002 aimed to measure NATO's ability to conduct two simultaneous major operations: an Article 5 operation (a war deployment following an attack on a NATO country) and a CRO, or Crisis-Response Operation—in this case intervening in a civil war that resulted when the United Nations mandated a split of one country into two parts. More than 33,000 military personnel from 26 nations participated. CT2 was deployed in the Article 5 portion of the exercise and was used by participants at four sites in three countries. This scenario involved the nations of "Blueland" and "Limeland," which though fictional, have a history that sounds all too plausible to students of recent international events. The Article 5 exercise required staff at command posts scattered throughout Western Europe to coordinate their actions and communicate their needs in order to come to Blueland's aid. The MITRE team was eager to find out whether CT2 could jumpstart a new era of collaborative communications among colleagues in different locations, working in different languages. How do NATO personnel communicate with each other? For decades, instantaneous confidential communication occurred mainly through face-to-face talks—not a choice when your counterpart sits in a command post hundreds of miles away. Secure telephone lines, where they're available, can provide direct interaction but not translation capabilities. Thus, though still a prototype, CT2 opens up a world of possibilities for improving and expanding secure collaboration in multinational situations. MITRE's longstanding relationship with several NATO agencies made the large-scale exercise a logical testbed for CT2. MITRE staff worked with members of the NATO BICES (Battlefield Intelligence Collection and Exploitation Systems) Agency to obtain the security approvals necessary to install and operate new equipment and software on the networks used for the exercise. Employing CT2 during Strong Resolve 2002, BICES personnel in several locations worked in real time with their colleagues throughout Western Europe using the Crises Response Operations in NATO Open System (CRONOS) computer network. How CT2 Works
CT2, spearheaded by MITRE's Christine Eliopoulos and Cynthia Sturm, is founded on an existing MITRE technology called Simple Instant Messaging and Presence (SIMP) service. The technology uses email as its model: many servers, many clients, local administration, and global access (as opposed to a store and forward, deliver, or drop design). Using Sun workstations with two network interfaces, one each for the BICES and CRONOS networks, SIMP powers the instant messaging and presence ("are you there?") services. This method is straightforward—but not secure enough to use in environments comprising heterogeneous information and communities of users (i.e., data classified at different security levels and users not cleared for all data). What makes CT2 useful for collaborating in heterogeneous environments such as this is the addition of a "security guard"—a software-based "traffic cop" that "listens" for messages and determines whether they are authorized for exchange across the security boundary. The CT2 Security Guard checks for instant messages containing digital signatures to verify identities, ensures that pairs of users can communicate according to a pre-established access control list, confirms the message is in fact only an instant message (not malicious code), and scans for "dirty words," all of which are red flags that indicate a potential security violation. Finally, CT2 adds a layer of translation software, known as the Translingual Instant Messenger (TrIM), which was also developed by MITRE. Even with all these features, administration required for configuring CT2 for the exercise was minimal. "NATO participants were able to use CT2 on their native workstations. We provided instant messaging as a supporting tool to assist with their normal workflow," Sturm says. The participants' workstations needed only IM and Java Virtual Machine software modules to enable them to interact with their counterparts. The MITRE team then installed IM and translation servers on the BICES and CRONOS networks, with the Security Guard residing at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). Sturm and Eliopoulos visited four locations before and during Strong Resolve 2002, installing software and training users. "Another member of our team, Garry Hirst, spent three weeks sitting in the bunker at the SHAPE facility in Mons, Belgium, watching over our Security Guard, which is really the most critical element in this prototype," says Eliopoulos. " He was observing the message traffic that was going back and forth between the CRONOS and BICES networks and making sure that the guard was healthy for the duration of the exercise. And it performed well." John Hammond, MITRE's European operations associate department head, notes that "MITRE has had a long history of support to NATO, as well as its major ground command in Europe, SHAPE . Highly qualified MITRE personnel ensure that U.S. interests are well served and considered in developments within BICES. Our combination of the technical skills as well as long time experience with the systems of U.S. overseas commands cannot be matched by any other source." Cultural Messages While the MITRE team was most concerned with security issues, end users were most interested in transparency: Did IM work smoothly? If I speak English, will I understand the French officer on the other network? "Users are least interested in the guard," notes Sturm. "All they care about is that they can talk to someone and get the language translated." "And while the language translation wasn't perfect, it was good enough. The users found great benefit in it," adds Eliopoulos. The TrIM component translated English, Spanish, French, and German. The two scientists say Dutch and Italian would also have been useful during the exercise, and Hammond hopes to have all 12 NATO languages simultaneously translated in the not-too-distant future. And, of course, all involved were concerned that the system would work without problems throughout the exercise. CT2 performed well—even in low-bandwidth environments—and quickly. In spite of the digital signatures, messages took mere seconds to traverse the security system. "Technology was not an issue," says Eliopoulos. Instead, the lessons learned centered on human behavior. The ways in which users interacted with the technology were among the most important aspects of the exercise; cultural barriers posed problems well beyond just the language issue. "Most people in the U.S. are familiar with instant messaging technology. But in other countries, some people are not so familiar with it," Eliopoulos says. "In addition, the notion of collaboration in general is viewed differently in various countries. In the United States it usually means sharing ideas and giving feedback. "What was really challenging to us—and this is true in many collaborative deployments, not just for NATO participants—is getting the users to start thinking about new ways to perform their jobs or accomplish their mission using a different set of tools that may allow them to be more effective," she adds. Although a three-week exercise isn't enough time to truly demonstrate all the benefits of a technology such as CT2, Strong Resolve 2002 offered an excellent start. MITRE's history of assisting NATO and its agencies no doubt contributed to the high comfort level needed to introduce an innovative technology during a fast-paced military exercise. "Our partnership with BICES provides a multinational platform for experimentation and testing of new concepts and ideas that could improve NATO's effectiveness in a coalition warfare environment," Hammond says. Mark Lawrence, General Manager of BICES, had nothing but compliments for the technology's test-run. In a letter to Robert Nesbit, senior vice president and general manager of MITRE's Center for Integrated Intelligence Systems, he noted that "CT2 demonstrated to our NATO allies the ability to provide cross-domain 'chat' with a multilingual feature that provided real-time translation of the users' texts. This essentially provided a surrogate telephone on these bandwidth-challenged networks, crossing security domains in a provisionally accredited manner. User response was very positive, especially in the NATO intelligence production arena." Other NATO agencies have showed interest in the technology, and Eliopoulos and Sturm are hoping to find a "home" for CT2 (a partner to further the technology) within the next year. Strong Resolve 2002 provided fertile ground to plant the seeds, and we hope CT2 will grow into a valuable tool in the future. —by Alison Stern-Dunyak Related Information Articles and News |
||||||||||||||||||||
| Page last updated: February 17, 2004 | Top of page |
Solutions That Make a Difference.® |
|
|
