Solution Overview

Cisco Army Solutions: Enhance Home Station Operations for Deployment Preparation

ChallengeArmies around the world have a primary responsibility to plan and conduct successful military operations, while protecting deployed military staff. Preparation for missions generally takes place in a home station, which are usually within the home nation away from tactical deployments. While these forces prepare for missions, they must also protect their home station networks. This can be a challenge because many of the various planning elements use technologies that are not collaborative or do not interoperate with one another. Not only must they find ways to improve communications and collaboration, they must develop more effective pre-deployment operational planning and increase physical and cyber security—all while reducing the total cost of operations.

Improved Communications and Collaboration Responding to a national disaster requires collaboration and effective communications with national agencies beyond the standard chain of command. Yet officials can be dispersed geographically, making in-person meetings impractical or impossible. Real-time data is crucial in such situations for making informed decisions rapidly. Tactical Command Post (TACCP) staff currently use video and chat tools to share information and conduct face-to-face meetings from disparate locations. They also use chat sessions, videoconferencing and teleconferencing to facilitate the shared meeting spaces and whiteboard planning so critical in defense operations. These technologies enable officials from disparate agencies to collaborate on operational planning before executing those plans.

Photo Courtesy of U.S. Army: Adam Gramarossa

As the leader in defense networking, Cisco helps the Army improve communications and collaboration from home station operations to deployed forces. Cisco Unified Communications is part of a comprehensive solution that includes network infrastructure, security, wireless, and management applications. By taking advantage of Web 2.0 technologies and existing business processes to enhance communications and foster collaboration, Cisco Unified Communications bring together data, voice, video, and mobile applications on fixed and mobile networks that deliver a media-rich collaboration experience.

More Effective Operational PlanningIn the past, army logistics personnel have used spreadsheet files to track equipment data manually. Maintaining multiple spreadsheets and manual processes for asset tracking has led to inconsistent data and duplication of efforts. Access to current operational and logistical information during deployment planning is essential. The commander and staff must be able to share information in confidence, and only those staff members with the relevant privileges are provided access to sensitive information. An understanding of the status of stocking levels and the ability to update them from remote databases at a shipping warehouse speeds up and facilitates deployment planning.

Using RFID technology with wireless hand-held devices, staff can transfer stock to and from the shipment facility with information automatically updated over the Internet/intranet to a secure, central logistics database. This requires commercial encryption technology that has been certified under the Government Information Assurance Policy. The Cisco encryption solution is certified under Common Criteria to protect sensitive Army inventory data while in transit. Stores can be scanned by the RFID tag automatically, requiring fewer personnel to handle inventory and making the information about inventory levels available to authorized officials from any location on the military network. Cisco’s wireless solution allows military staff to process stores and ship to deployment locations more quickly, while improving accuracy and efficiency by reducing human involvement.

Increase Physical and Logical SecurityIn military operations, deployed networks must offer collaborative systems that can manage all types of data collection points centrally and redistribute the data in real time. Deployed staff must have a way to conduct voice- and tele-conferences with other agencies or participants, so they can consult each stakeholder at once and come to the best decision rapidly. Security is critical to accomplish this level of collaboration.

For example, if a network installation in the field experiences a physical attack, personnel at the command center must try to assess the threat level. Staff must have real-time, up-to-the-minute data to respond properly. Data about the attack may come from disparate sources and the technologies used to collect this data may not be interoperable. Denial of Service attacks can infiltrate your IP network, making access to data even more problematic.

Cisco leads the unified communications industry with complete integration of data, voice, and video, coupled with collaborative innovations such as Cisco Video Surveillance Manager. These solutions use the highly reliable Linux operating system equipped with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and IP network-protocols to interoperate with a wide range of third-party devices and applications. Cisco advanced video surveillance systems enable integration with third-party video analytics software capabilities that are set to alert staff to specific triggers and events at key locations or secure points of strategic assets. Cisco IPICS, intelligent Radio over IP network system integrates disparate push-to-talk radio, or two-way voice communications with other data, voice, and video networks to facilitate collaboration across multiple network, operational, or organizational domains.

Cisco security products and solutions have many risk-reducing security features, helping to mitigate and circumvent denial-of-service attacks that can obstruct military personnel from obtaining the information they need to make informed decisions. The industry-leading Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC), for example, controls access while enabling IT administrators to quarantine and remediate noncompliant endpoints automatically. Cisco security solutions conform to many global government regulations to provide highly secure, reliable data transit in mission-critical scenarios.

Photo Courtesy of U.S. Army: Maj. John H. Alderman IV

Solution Overview

Centralized Operations Over the Cisco Intelligent Information NetworkCritical home station information management and technology strategy is necessary for planning and conducting military operations. A Cisco intelligent information network improves home station operations with centralized communications, coordination, and collaboration to create greater operational efficiencies. Additionally, Cisco offers a wide range of highly reinforced, tightly integrated, end-to-end security solutions—including threat defense and identity-based networking—that enables rapid response to threats.

IP-based Cisco products and the Cisco Service-Oriented Network Architecture provide a common computing infrastructure that allows for the sharing of confidential information across secure network connections. With support for capabilities such as virtual LANs, military organizations can create highly secure, closed user groups that span buildings or hemispheres. The fibre channel fabric on Cisco storage-area switches presents an array of defenses, such as fibre channel zoning, which eliminates the risk of a host gaining unauthorized access to a disk used by another host. This multilayered approach to protecting assets from external and internal threats, whether known and unknown, enables rapid response to security challenges and comprehensive safeguarding of network assets. It also helps military organizations maximize network uptime and productivity, while minimizing threat impact.

Innovative Solutions for the World’s Military As the leader in defense networking, Cisco provides mission-critical solutions to enable key objectives in military environments. Beyond routing and switching, Cisco offers end-to-end service architectures that enable the convergence of data, voice, and video to establish secure, high-availability communications wherever and whenever they are needed.

The Cisco Global Government Solutions Group supports defense agencies around the world by delivering innovative, integrated mission capabilities through thought leadership, advanced technologies and services. The group comprises a team of top experts from all levels of government around the world. They not

Photo Courtesy of U.S. Army: Maj. Deanna Bague, Fort Bliss Public Affairs

Photo Courtesy of U.S. Army: Spc. Evan D. Marcy

Solution Overview

Cisco has more than 200 offices worldwide. Addresses, phone numbers, and fax numbers are listed on the Cisco Website at www.cisco.com/go/offices.

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only understand unique military challenges, they bring years of experience to solve them.

Cisco provides integrated solutions that securely and smoothly connect the entire chain of command to mission-critical information. Cisco has played a key role in building the Army’s tactical infrastructure for many years. Our innovation, incorporated into every part of Cisco technology and solutions, protect your investments today and well into the future.

For More InformationLearn more about Cisco solutions for the army and other global government solutions and services for defense at www.cisco.com/go/defense.

Leading the Way for Secure Collaboration and Communication

Cisco offers a portfolio of solutions to address the collaboration and communication needs of today’s armies.

Collaboration SolutionsCisco Unified Communications Manager: • Create adaptive workspaces that promote productivity, business agility, security and competitive advantage.

Cisco ASA 5500 Appliances: • Increase the security of real-time, unified communications applications and protect the critical elements of your UC deployment, including network infrastructure, call-control platforms, and IP endpoints.

Voice over Secure IP: • Use the inherent encryption of your classified networks to maintain secure voice communications between users. Through VoSIP every call is transported and secured at the same classification level as the network.

Interactive Face-to-Face Communications Cisco Unified Video Advantage: • Bring video telephony functions to your network, including multipoint bridge capabilities to support operations using Cisco Unified IP phones (Cisco Unified IP Phones 7900 Series and Cisco IP Communicator soft-phone application).

Cisco Unified Personal Communicator: • Easily access voice, video, instant messaging, Web conferencing, voicemail and presence information from a single, multimedia interface on your PC or Mac.

Interoperability Systems Cisco IP Interoperability and Communications System (IPICS): • Enable emergency first responders to exchange incident information quickly and on demand by connecting single-channel radios into the IP network. This product elegantly integrates into Cisco Unified Communications.

Interactive Collaboration MeetingPlace: • Share rich content, view participants, manage, record and play back meetings, and easily set up and attend conferences.

WebEx Meeting Center: • Make presentations, share applications, and update spreadsheets in WebEx online meetings with integrated audio conferencing. Meet online with operations staff and logistics personnel, and conduct training on this interactive application.

Cisco TelePresence: • Create a live, face-to-face meeting experience over the network, using true, high-definition-quality video that empowers you to interact and collaborate like never before.

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Photo Courtesy of U.S Army: Sgt. Matthew C. Cooley, 15th Sustainment Brigade Public Affairs