Newswise — WASHINGTON – The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) announced today the implementation a new technology to streamline and improve secure information sharing between DHS and its partners. The Backend Attribute Exchange will simplify user identification and verification between different organizations for the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN), by eliminating redundancies while ensuring proper security.
Using the Backend Attribute Exchange, a person’s credentials would be kept at their workplace, and be accessible should they visit another organization. Rather than sending credentials between the locations insecurely, the Backend Attribute Exchange supplies a more efficient, more secure way for the visiting agency to verify the necessary information.
“Ensuring the identity of network users is critical to sharing information securely,” said DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology Dr. Reginald Brothers. “By strengthening data security, this innovation will better enable collaboration between DHS and our partners in support of our homeland security mission.”
Developed by the Maryland-based Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU-APL) and the Connecticut based Queralt Inc., with funding from S&T, this system will be utilized as a tangible technology by the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN), the Department’s own information sharing and collaboration infrastructure.
The HSIN supports information sharing and collaboration among federal, state, local, territorial, tribal, private sector and international partners for national security purposes.
Ten years after its designation as the platform for sharing sensitive-but-unclassified information across the homeland security enterprise, HSIN has more than 55,000 users who rely on the systems’ tools for planning, response, and daily operations.
For more information, visit https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/csd-idm
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