DoD advances Joint Information Environment elements

The US Department of Defense (DoD) has made advancements on elements of its Joint Information Environment, it announced on 24 March.

The new elements developed by the DoD include a Joint Regional Security Stack (JRSS) and a mobility programme for smartphones. While the DoD is working on all the elements for the Joint Information Environment framework, the JRSS is a key priority according to Terry Halvorsen, chief information officer, DoD.

Halvorsen said: 'What JRSS will do when we have it right is enable a central view of all of the data that is more commonly shared by all the levels where we want to share it, which is a lot.'

The JRSS is a series of 19-inch racks in cabinets, with the racks containing network applications and appliances. Dave Cotton, lead, JRSS programme, said that this technology enables a consolidated view of the network activity and potential anomalies.

Cotton said that the JRSS will give military and defence command centre a better picture for examining analytics and taking immediate action.

As for the mobility programme, Halvorsen said that progress is being made on dual-persona unclassified Blackberry smartphones currently in use, and a modified commercial Android phone that DoD personnel can use to do secret-level security work.

Halvorsen said: 'I have ongoing mobility pilots and … I've got to be able to protect different levels of data.

'I need all data to be somewhat mobile and today I've got pretty good answers [about] how I can make unclassified data mobile.'

He also said: 'We've got some new classified devices coming out and I am very happy with where they are.

'I am a little anxious about how many of them we can field on what timeline, and we’re having some very good discussions with DISA about that.'

On the unclassified side, the DoD has started fielding the dual-persona phones, which can be used by department personnel for official business and for personal e-mail and some applications. Around 1,500 phones have been distributed so far, including the ones that were in the pilot.