Department Of Defense Network Research Articles

Preserving Continuity of Behavioral Health Clinical Care to Patients Using Mobile Devices

The current model for treating behavioral health patients requires that providers and patients be in the same location for appointments. However, deploying warfighters present a challenge to this current model. Recent advances in technology make telehealth or virtual visits a viable option to replace the current model. This project leveraged mobile technology to see if performing tele-behavioral health visits presented a viable option to the current in-person model for future deployed warfighters. At the time of this publication, the authors note the current pandemic lends all the more urgency to the need for enhancing our video communication platforms for remote monitoring with the Military Health System. The research team assessed existing Internet protocol-based desktop teleconferencing solutions, generically known as a Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC) system, for establishing a secure connection to a Service Members personal mobile device outside of the Department of Defense (DoD) network. Of the five existing WebRTC systems evaluated, only the backbone component to the existing Defense Information Systems Agency Global Video Services (DISA GVS) known as Vidyo, was suitable to meet DoD security requirements and still connect with both major operating systems (OS) on mobile devices. An existing DoD program of record mobile application, mCare, was integrated with Vidyo desktop technologies to form what the research team called "Mobile Connect." Deployment of the Mobile Connect product yielded distinct differences and high levels or variability between the .osd.mil and the army.mil network connections over time. These network differences impacted quality of service solution where Mobile Connect could not be used to provide care between the .mil and patient's personal mobile devices from a osd.mil domain connection. The current DoD WebRTC systems offer potential solutions but presently cannot connect with personal mobile devices in their current configurations. Additionally, any WebRTC system used by the DoD for future connections to personal mobile device must leverage commercial Single Socket Layer certificates (e.g., not DoD issued), or the communications with the mobile device will fail as a result of an authentication error. It is technically feasible to provide desktop Video Tele-Conference capabilities from a .mil computer to a personal mobile device without compromising DoD security and information assurance requirements using future WebRTC systems. Approved ports, protocols, and system settings must be configured to accept both inbound and outbound, encrypted traffic to/from personal mobile devices to maintain consistent quality of service with all DoD networks. Of the current DoD WebRTC options, working with the DISA GVS Program Manager to expand services to support commercial mobile devices has the highest probability of future success.

Understanding the importance of expanding the definition of interoperability through social network analysis

AbstractOver the past decade, the Department of Defense (DoD) developed an emergent network of systems that operate together on the battlefield to provide value to the DoD. Advances in systems engineering have enabled the DoD to develop better, more integrated, and more complex systems in this time frame. One of the emerging topics in systems engineering is the importance of nonfunctional attributes captured in the ilities of a system. One of these ilities, interoperability, captures the ability of a system to operate with other systems as DoD systems do on the battlefield. This article applies social network analysis tools and methods to understand the effect of expanding the definition of interoperability beyond information flows to include shared resources and physical connections. Social network analysis metrics, such as density and average degree, quantify the effect of expanding interoperability to capture other aspects of interoperability. By capturing these additional aspects of interoperability, the number of connections in the DoD network of systems increases by nearly a factor of four. Thus, if the ility of interoperability narrowly focuses on information flows, then systems engineers could potentially miss a large number of important connections in a network of systems.

The United States Department of Defense and the International Health Regulations (2005): perceptions, pitfalls and progress towards implementation

The World Health Organiza-tion’s (WHO’s) International Health Regulations (IHR) (2005) form the central guiding framework for both reporting of public health threats and potential public health emergencies of international concern.In recent years, the Department of Defense network has established disease surveillance in collaboration with host countries and has built a core capacity within each host country for sustained monitoring of respiratory disease activ-ity within their borders. This network has demonstrated the ability to iden-tify and respond quickly to public health emergencies of international concern, as illustrated in the influenza pandemic of 2009–10, and has also provided multiple viral-strain contributions to influenza vaccines over the past decade.

Successful Introduction of Cloud Computing into your Organization: A Six-Step Conceptual Model

LITERATURE SURVEY: THE LANDSCAPE OF CLOUD COMPUTING A recent survey on the status, applications, versatilities, popularities, and opportunities gained by using cloud computing platforms reveals interesting facts as follows: Many banks including ING are testing cloud computing for integrating it into their operations. In a survey of 186 banking technology professionals interested in cloud computing 73 percent of the participants indicated that cloud computing will enable them to meet user demands quickly and achieve scale (Crosman, 2010). Morgan Stanley is another major bank that is planning to integrate cloud computing into its operations. However, security and privacy in cloud computing are among the major concerns (Cohen, 2008). Department of Defense (DoD) is exploring the use of cloud computing in one of the following four categories (Anonymous, 2010): * Use commercially provided cloud services * Deploy cloud computing within DoD networks * Develop a multi-agency cloud computing network for data processing and storage * Develop a combined DoD/commercial provider system Key decision makers believe cloud computing will provide greater agility and flexibility for the DoD, today and in the future. Cloud computing will also increase efficiencies and incur marked cost savings during their life-cycles to alleviate some of the pressure of budget reductions. Once again, security and privacy are major concerns for this deployment (Forbes, 2011, Anonymous, 2011). In addition, experts believe that, the department of defense could run more effectively using cloud technologies. DoD could become a model and show other large organizations how cloud computing applications could be used (Linthicum, 2010d). According to experts it makes no sense for smaller enterprises to operate their own data centers. Cloud computing will be both cost effective and also environmentally safer and cleaner for such organizations (Krill, 2010). Cloud computing platforms clearly support the growing phenomenal of computing and could help organization to achieve their green goals. An executive at global consultancy CSC predicts that half of all IT workloads will become cloud services by 2016 (Knorr, 2011). Despite millisecond delays cross-ocean cloud applications are gaining in popularity because of major cost saving and other advantages (Thibodeau, 2011c). President Barack Obama relies heavily on cloud computing and data center consolidation to keep IT costs under control (Thibodeau, 2011b). The Obama administration aims to cut costs by embracing the cloud in place of in-house, proprietary technology (Samson, 2010). A report published in Techland.time.com in February 2011 indicates that YouTube uses cloud computing infrastructure to split video processing between hundreds of thousands of machines, allowing them to process video seven times faster than in 2008 (and even four times faster than just six months ago) (McMillan, 2011). Tata Communications will offer cloud computing that includes services for computing, data transfer, and storage (Ribeiro, 2010). Joining Microsoft, Oracle, Google and others, IBM plans to offer a cloud-based office suite (Jackson, 2011). IBM also puts Notes and collaboration in the cloud (Knorr, 2010). China is building a city-sized cloud computing and office complex that will include a mega data center. Cloud computing is among the projects supporting that country's double-digit growth in IT spending (Thibodeau, 2011a). BACKGROUND As reviewed in the previous section, cloud computing is one of the fastest area of application within the information systems field. Most computer and networking companies are trying to either enter into this area or increase their existing market share. Even during the economic down turn, cloud computing related jobs have been in high demand (Linthicum, 2010b). …

Top Secret Traffic and the Public ATM Network Infrastructure

The current network security paradigm, coupled with the desire to transport classified traffic securely, has caused the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to maintain its own isolated networks, distinct from the public ATM network infrastructure. Internally, the DoD maintains four types of completely separate and isolated networks to carry top secret, secret, confidential, and unclassified traffic, respectively. A public ATM network may be viewed as carrying unclassified or nonsecure traffic. Although the cost of maintaining four separate network types is becoming increasingly prohibitive to the DoD, the inability of the public and DoD to utilize each other's network resources runs counter to the current atmosphere of dual use and economies of scale. This article introduces the concept of a “mixed use” network, wherein the four DoD network types and the public ATM network are coalesced into a single, unified network that transports all four types of traffic, efficiently and without compromising their respective security. In a mixed use network, the ATM nodes and links that are common between the DoD and public networks are labeled “joint use” and fall under the jurisdiction of the military for obvious protection of the security assets. The concept of “mixed use” is the direct result of the user-level, security-on-demand principle that recently has been introduced in the literature and one that is enabled by the fundamental security framework and the basic characteristic of ATM networks. This article models a representative 32- node public ATM network, a 40-node DoD network, and the coalesced 50-node mixed use network, and executes accurate simulations on a testbed that, in turn, executes on a network of Linux workstations configured as a loosely coupled parallel processor. The simulation testbed closely resembles an operational ATM network, thereby implying realistic results. Performance data, obtained for representative input traffic stimulus, constitute a successful scientific demonstration of the concept of a “mixed use” network. Furthermore, the results reveal that because the unclassified DoD traffic encounters a richer connectivity in the mixed use network, the success rate of the DoD calls is significantly higher in the mixed use network than in the military network. The unclassified DoD traffic's demand for security resources decreases, thereby enabling a much higher chance for the secure calls to succeed. Unlike in the traditional DoD classified networks, in a mixed use network the security resources are not distributed uniformly throughout the network. In this paradigm, security is viewed as a distributed resource, and the underlying distributed resource allocation strategy aims at allocating it to each user efficiently, based on demand and dictated by need.

CSNET protocol software

CSNET is built on the Department of Defense network (ARPANET), public packet-switched physical networks (Telenet), and a telephone-based relay network (Phonenet). Some CSNET sites have direct connections to ARPANET, some have direct connections to Telenet, and some have connections only to telephone-based relay machines. The chief objective of CSNET is to provide a network interconnection for all groups engaged in Computer Science Research. CSNET has adopted TCP/IP as its standard transport level protocols. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) [POST81] is an end-to-end protocol. It establishes communications between two processes that are running on different machines, detects and corrects errors, controls data flow, and provides reliable communications. Application programs call TCP to transfer data across the network. TCP, in turn, uses the Internet Protocol (IP) [POST81] to send data to the appropriate network. CSNET communications such as file transfer, remote login, and process-to-process communication over the network assume that a TCP interface is available at CSNET sites. Since ARPANET sites are required to support the TCP/IP protocols, CSNET sites connected directly to the ARPANET automatically have access to TCP/IP. Phonenet relays connect directly to the ARPANET; they too have access to TCP to relay mail onto the ARPANET. Telenet does not use the TCP/IP protocols. Consequently, CSNET sites that are connected only to Telenet need additional software before they can communicate on CSNET. That software is described in this paper -- it provides an interface between the public packet - switched protocol X.25 [CCITT78] and TCP/IP. Although the design outlined here is applicable to any vendor's system, our implemention is for a Digital Equipment Corporation VAX running the Western Electric UNIX [UNIX78] operating system as modified by the University of California at Berkeley. This report focuses on the technical issues involved in building software to interface TCP/IP and X.25. The tariff structure for public networks is discussed only to the extent that it influences our design. Other issues such as access control, and protocol selection are beyond the scope of this report.