Need To Share: Flowing Valued Information and Secure Networking

Abstract

The Flowing Valued Information (FVI) and Need to Share (NTS) project addresses implementation and security issues that arise when multi-national, government and non-government organizations (NGOs), have a mission requirement to readily share information. Current control measures, specifically within the US Department of Defense (DOD), only share information on a “Need to Know” (NTK) basis. This often is restricted to a hierarchy of classifications amongst organizations who already have an established trust relationship. This and other primary systems currently in use are often not sufficient enough in a large number of cases militaries and NGOs are finding themselves in today. Present doctrine in military coalition environments allow commanders to declare a “need to share”, however, there is no automated method to ensure timeliness and efficiency in distributing information across all entities who have a need for it. These environments also pose an issue of trust in military-NGO scenarios. Similar problems are also found in humanitarian aid and disaster relief (HADR) operations. Even though the information being shared may often be represented the same by all organizations, the infrastructure and protocols for movement and communications rarely are. The FVI-NTS project provides an automated means for supporting organizational information sharing in a trusted manner. It allows organizational authorities to implement automated command policies while maintaining the integrity of the data being shared. FVI-NTS formally proves the coexistence of both NTK and NTS controls. It also provides users an elegant but effective graphical user interface for accessing the above system that can be readily be deployed across many organizations regardless of environment. This front-end functionality expands the domain of possible implementation of FVI-NTS to serve as the standard for future DOD NTS network policies and requirements as well as other organizational groups with similar needs. The software is open source and supports operation on multiple computing platforms simultaneously.