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![1105 Media [happiness]](/images/ds1_pntmlogo.gif "1105 Media [happiness]") |
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home > April 21, 2008 issue > article
Message convergence rolls on
By Frank Whitehead
Special to Defense Systems
The old way of delivering organizational messages across
the Defense Department was a fixed infrastructure known as the
Automatic Digital Network, where messages were sent to a communications
center, printed and hand-delivered to a recipient’s
mailbox.
The problem with Autodin was that it was slow, lacked the ability
to carry attachments, was manually intensive and cost
a lot. With the boom of the Internet era in the early
1990s, the Defense Information Systems Agency
moved to a heavy client/server infrastructure, called
the Defense Message System (DMS), which had the
capability to handle attachments, such as maps,
videos and spreadsheets.
Although more efficient than Autodin, the problem
with DMS was that it required a Class 4 National
Security Agency certification at each user’s workstation
for nonrepudiation. This messaging security protocol
required users to present a PCMCIA card —
called a Fortezza card — to log in to the system and
decrypt messages. The cards had reliability issues that
left users with a lack of confidence in DMS’ ability to
deliver their messages.
Today’s user no longer worries about messaging.
Although DMS and Autodin are still in use, they
operate in the background as the X.400 transport
layer. The Automated Message Handling System, a
Web-based, enterprisewide messaging system developed
by Telos, rides across the transport layer.
The need for organizational messaging is not going away. When
critical command and control information and directives are issued,
they must come from an organization authorized to issue the orders
and directives, and there must be assured delivery within allowable
time constraints and a permanent record of the transaction.
In addition, there must be assurance that the organization issuing
the directive is the organization it claims to be and that no
single individual is so critical that directives cannot be sent or
received without them. These requirements demand organizationlevel
action.
As networking technology continues to improve and additional
bandwidth becomes available, there will be the opportunity for
additional consolidation. The efficiencies gained by moving from
multiple communications scattered worldwide will enable the military
services to use personnel more effectively and reduce the number
of people dedicated to messaging tasks and consequently the
burden of training many people to perform highly
complex tasks.
There are already plans and discussions under way
to combine the services’ existing communications
nodes into a far smaller number of joint service communications
facilities. These changes will take time to
implement because there are differences in individual
service policies and procedures. Each step must also
be weighed carefully to ensure that the overall communications
infrastructure does not become vulnerable
to attacks, either cyberattacks or physical destruction
that would significantly disrupt organizational
messaging.
There is also a growing need to share information
across networks that now compete for the same
bandwidth. Certain organizational messages might
contain sensitive information intended for limited distribution,
but a good portion should be made available
to a wider group of organizations that can benefit
from seeing a bigger picture. Consequently, how
organizational messages are handled will change.
As consolidation occurs, the number of messages that must leave
a facility and travel via the backbone networks are reduced.
Messages sent and received from organizations via the same joint
communications node might be no more than setting pointers in a
messaging database. Whatever the solution, it’s clear that information
sharing, including wider distribution of organizational messages,
will become a reality.
Frank Whitehead is senior vice president of Xacta at Telos. He formerly worked as
chief of staff at the Defense Information Systems Agency. He has more than
28 years of Defense Department organizational messaging experience.
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