A self-healing network and other new technology for government
Connecting state and local government leaders
Federal officials and industry representatives got together at AFCEA's Emerging Technology Symposium to go over the latest tools.
A recent event in Washington, D.C., introduced government officials to a variety of new products, such as smart cybersecurity systems, information sharing tools and secure communications gear.
AFCEA’s Emerging Technology Symposium, held Feb. 21, is geared toward introducing government officials to emerging technologies and new products and exposing industry to what the federal agencies are looking for.
A sampling of what was on display:
Secure communications and networking. V2VNet from Dispersive Solutions is a spread spectrum technology that provides users with a self-healing network with secure connections to trusted clients, even during a cyberattack. Featuring military grade network security supporting voice, video and data communications, V2VNet routs communications between fixed and mobile devices while using multiple independent paths using “deflects” on each path to avoid zero day and man-in-the-middle attacks.
Network security: Red Seal Network’s Proactive Security Intelligence system is designed to provide end-to-end security and automated network assessment, said Mike Paluzzi, managing director of the company’s federal business unit. The software-based system collects the data in routers and firewalls, gathers their files and parses out their rules sets to provide administrators with network situational awareness, he said. The network reporting also allows risk assessments to be tailored to individual user environments.
Cloud security: Catbird’s vSecurity tool is designed for use in cloud data centers, where it assigns security capabilities to virtual machines, said Bill Rohrs, the company’s federal sector business director. Combining firewalls with vulnerability scanning and network flow monitoring, the system can also divide a network into “trust zones” that allow virtual assets to associate by zone based on their security policies. vSecurity had been deployed by VMWare and Red Hat, and is in use with NASA, DHS and the Army, he said.
Flash memory goes big: Fusion iO’s family of solid-state flash memory products range from the 1.5G iO drive to the 10-terabyte Octal. These memory devices are designed to support big data applications by keeping the data close to the CPU for microsecond retrieval and use speeds, said Christian Shrauder, the firm’s chief technology officer for federal systems.
Videoconferencing for all sizes: Vidyo Conferencing technology produces low-latency, platform-independent videoconferencing hardware and software. Products range from the VidyoRouter to the Vidyo SID software-based capability and the Vidyo API Suite that allows users to build their own custom communications tools. The company’s technology can scale to the very small, with the VidyoMobile application that turns iOS and Android smart phones and tablets into telepresence endpoints, to the VidyoPanorama immersive telepresence technology that can support up to nine screens and any combination of full-screen participant videos.
Big picture, fast: SitScape is a software-based information-sharing technology that allows users to cut and paste data from other Web pages, such as charts, video feeds, text and imagery, directly onto the SitScape browser. The system is designed to allow first responders, warfighters and intelligence analysts to quickly put together graphic presentations for command-and-control and information-sharing purposes, said company executive John Dickinson. Now in use with the intelligence community, and the Homeland Security and the Defense departments, SitScape allows users to create a common operating picture with no programming. It can be run from any computer, pull data from any source and share the information with colleagues, he said.