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Like most security experts you realize how important it is these days to be plugged-in to the information superhighway. In your quest for infinite knowledge perhaps you have sought the wisdom of the good people in your IT department only to be told they were too busy with their own job to really focus on your needs. You have asked your bosses for guidance but they are too technologically challenged to understand the difference between an ISP and the PSI in their golf cart tires. Building a traditional server side intelligence network that can automatically push critical information and alerts to you in real time can be a daunting concept, one large in scope and extremely costly. Few have the resources to build an omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient CSI Hollywood computer where with a few simple keystrokes you can instantly learn the identity of your company’s equivalent to Professor Moriarty.
Establish Redundant Communications Nothing is more important than a properly configured communication system. It is the foundation of any effective security or crisis management system. You may already have adequate communications for day to day operations but for this exercise let’s assume all company phone lines, e-mail and internet connections are down. Now what do you do? Do you have redundancy build into your communications system that will allow you to keep your information superhighway up and running when other systems have failed? Do you have a modern day equivalent of two tin cans and a wire?
Here are
some ways to beef up your current communications system and keep you
constantly in the information loop. http://www.ruggednotebooks.com/ Your organization should have at least one disaster resistant laptop. Panasonic and Rugged both make laptops that can survive high impacts, extreme heat and cold, water, dirt, etc. Use this laptop to back-up your critical operational files so when the desktop network is down, you have the ability to continue operations and start recovery. Equally important, laptops can provide you with a reliable portal to the outside world but to do so they must be configured with simultaneous access to wireless WAN, wireless LAN, BluetoothTM and GPS. Add a satellite wireless card and you could be connected almost anywhere in the world. One more thing, take your laptop home with you every night, that’s why they call it portable.
Use Groove
to build your own private worldwide network. Groove (bought a few years
ago by Microsoft) is an encrypted
peer-to-peer application. That means there is no centralized network
server to compromise. Think of Groove as an instant messenger program on
steroids. It securely connects you directly with any Groove enabled
computer anywhere in the world. Let’s say you have sensitive information
you would like to share with a vendor across the country. Hook up both
computers with Groove and the files are shared within seconds. Another
handy feature is the voice-over IP. If your phone system is down or if you
just want a secure conversation with no phone bill, hook up a headset and
speak with anyone anywhere in the world that is using Groove. This feature
also comes in handy for training groups of people that are spread out
across a large geographic region. Groove creates a common computer work
space where everyone in the group from two to two hundred, can chat and
exchange information in real time. What if the person you want to connect
with does not have Groove? No problem, Groove will send them an e-mail
invitation so they can download Groove off the web and be up and running
in about ten minutes. Post 9-11 many state and federal law enforcement
officials started using Groove because it allowed them to cut through the
red tape and communicate across agencies in a secure environment. This
program is a must have for anyone serious about establishing secure
reliable communications.
Named after
the Danish King, Harrald Blatand (aka Bluetooth) who united Scandinavia,
Bluetooth can unite your electronic devices. Also referred to as a PAN
(Personal Area Network) it is a wireless technology that allows you to
connect with multiple compatible devices such as cell phones, laptops,
printers, etc. Let’s say you need to evacuate your high-rise building.
First responders such as police and fire arrive and ask you who is inside.
Your perfectly configured Bluetooth laptop, (see directions above)
contains a list of employees trapped between the 10th and 15th floors. If
the police and firefighters have Bluetooth enabled electronic devices and
are within 30 feet of your laptop, you can automatically transfer the
evacuation list to their devices simultaneously. About 30% of the cell
phones sold in 2004 had Bluetooth, by 2007 the number is predicted to rise
to 70%. Jump on the bandwagon, get Bluetooth and be ahead of the curve. The "About LinkIn" page sums it up nicely "LinkedIn is an online network of more than 20 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries." Sound it little boring doesn't it? NOT! LinkedIn proves that we really are only a few people away from knowing everyone in the world. For example, I have 222 "trusted friends and colleagues" in the first degree of my network. Those 222 people "Friends of friends; each connected to one of your connections" collectively knows 15,600+ people. Here the really cool part. Through everyone in my network, "Three degrees away" I can reach 1,549,800 users through a friend and one of my friends." Features include a place to post your "profile" See mine here, post and receive public recommendations, job boards, expert Q & A, and a "recommended" service provider listing. The service basic is free and you can pay about $50 per month for some extras like the ability to get introduced to people you don't know first person, be they prospected employers or possible stalkers. This network grows exponentially. Last week, in one day I have an average of 20,000 join my network. think of it as a non flashy version of my space for adults. This service is a must have.
Plaxo, a
free service, started out a sophisticated an on-line address book and is
becoming a very good networking tool. It automatically keeps
track of and synchronizes the address book and calendar on your computer
with a copy on the Plaxo network. With one click of the mouse, Plaxo will
send everyone in your address book an e-mail asking to verify their
current information. If you or another Plaxo member changes your personal
contact information such as your e-mail or phone number, Plaxo will
automatically send updates to everyone in your address book. There are 5
million customers in Plaxo who generate over one billion connections. Pay
the small fee for the premium service, it is worth the money. Cell Phones
http://www.thewirelesswizard.com/
You say
you don't need a satellite phone these days because everyone has a cell
phone. Baloney! The first cell phone I bought in 1988 was far superior in
quality and coverage than the modern versions. If your serious about
redundancy every
security department should have at least one satellite phone. Why share
your cell phone network with several million others during an emergency. Prices are
only slightly more than traditional cell phones and when you need one, it
will be worth its weight in gold.
OnStar is a
reasonably priced vehicle based communication system offered by General
Motors. It uses various existing wireless phone networks in the United States and
Canada along with an excellent GPS system. Service coverage is not
guaranteed however. If your handheld cell phone is down OnStar and the satellite
coverage offers you additional communication options. I have had On-Star in
both my vehicles and I love it. Several other car companies also use OnStar such as Acura, Audi, Isuzu and Volkswagen.
NC4 is an
organization that monitors thousands of incident information sources
nationwide then generates geographically relevant alerts. Say there is a
major fire down the street from your office that will affect traffic in
your area. NC4 will send you an e-mail. You can then log into their site
and get more information in the form of maps, photos, news, etc. If there
are people in your business community that have similar interests, you can
create secure groups and discussion forums to share pertinent information.
Through a web interface, their NC4 has the ability to link you directly
with participating business and government contacts to effectively manage
critical incidents. NC4 users have also established local meeting
chapters, another good resource of information
It is the
weekend and you are at home when a terrorist incident hits your business
neighborhood. One of your managers is on vacation in Ireland. The company
CEO is at a business conference in China. No problem, Control Risks Group
can log into your web based VIMs system and start managing the situation
for you. They can start an incident log and send out alerts to you, your
manager and your CEO. You can then all log in to your secure VIMs web page
and begin managing the incident on-line in real time before you arrive at
the office. Once you arrive at work you then take over the incident
management and bring all your additional resources into one virtual work
space. VIMs allows you to assign tasks, track progress, share data in real
time and save it all in one place so you have a record of how you
responded. Think of VIMs as a virtual EOC. Control Risks Group is a world
wide business risk management consultancy that has been around since 1975.
They have worked for clients in over 130 countries and are headquartered
in London, England. For more information e-mail vims@control-risks.com.
All these
fancy electronic devices you are using for redundant communication require
power. How can you keep them up and running in the event of a power
outage? Check out the iSun device from ICP Solar Technologies. This
portable device comes with several plug-in accessories to match almost any
cell phone or small electronics device on the market. They also have
larger solar panels that take the place of old-fashion bulky UPS batteries
and can provide up to 300 watts of power.
Even if
the sources do not have an RSS feed, use the old fashion method and configure your internet
browser with useful links to several internet news services. Choose
several national and international sites to achieve a variety of
information and perspectives. Many internet sites are updated quickly as
news breaks. Here are some you can start with that I have found have the
most accurate and up to the minute information.
Yahoo News
is easy to navigate, up to date and has some powerful features such as an
excellent RSS. For
example, you can research almost any news story by searching Yahoo News,
All News, Photos, and Audio/Video files. You can search in any of thirty
five different languages. Yahoo is a good solid source.
But the
service isn’t exactly free; Search the news from thousands of sources,
updated every 15 minutes. You can get good results with the free version
but pay a small fee and get the upgraded version, it is worth it.
News from
the Middle East in English. I have found a few stories here that were not
on the other wire services.
People’s
Daily On-line is a Chinese news service. For some reason they often get
the inside scoop on a lot of news stories before everyone else.
International Herald Tribune - Easy to use navigation map that allows you
to jump right into the news of the continent you are interested in.
This site
has free public records information that will give you a name and address.
Until recently you could find many high profile people in here for free.
Now they are starting to charge for these “premium” type searches.
A good
search directory because it has links to many other locate services such
as e-mail address verification, location by IP address, area code lookup,
ZIP code lookup, reverse phone searches, etc. Some are free and some cost
money.
A
sort of scary service from Google. First, download a free program to
operate the service then click on the icon. A real photo of the world will
appear from outer space. Type in a home or business address anywhere in
the world and the program will literally fly to your address and give you
a picture of the location from 3,000 feet above the earth. Then you can
filter the search to show public infrastructure, 3-D buildings for major
cities, waterways, schools, roads, restaurants, driving directions, etc.
They are now adding street level virtual drive bys of your street using
actual photos. Yikes! It is very useful to good and bad guys alike.
Browse
through 30 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. Their
mission: To create a comprehensive archive of the internet, an Internet
Library so to speak. Using their “WayBackMachine” (Peabody and Sherman)
you are likely to find old URL’s (websites) that have long been
disconnected from the internet. Very cool site.
Don’t let
his funny suit and sales pitch scare you, Mathew Lesko is the master of
information resources. I’ve been using his books for 20 years. Long before
the internet was king, he had books full of lists that today still rival
most computer databases.
Their
website can say it better than I can:
The
Overseas Security Advisory Council. One thing I like about this site is
they have excellent canned reports in Adobe .PDF and PowerPoint formats
that can be downloaded for free and used for training.
The
Global Terrorism Database, is hosted by START, The National Consortium for
the Study of Terrorism & Responses to Terrorism, a Center of Excellence of
the Department of Homeland Security Based at the University of Maryland.
(That's the whole title, really) Just call it the GTB. It is a great tool!
You can search for Groups,
Incidents, Countries, Leaders and Members, Legal Cases and Legal
Documents. Mapping allows you to do a quick incident search by selecting a
geographic region. Click on the United States and you will find 37
terrorist groups. 4 in Canada. Japan has 5 groups, England 6, France 20,
and China 1. Traveling to Mexico City? Click on the map and the database
lists 20 terrorist incidents since 1973. The site also allows you to
search for specific types of incidents that have no responsible party
association. There are graphs, pie charts and 3D reporting models and
their database design is an excellent model for data gathering and
analysis.
The
Anti-Defamation League Law Enforcement Agency Resource Network provides an
outstanding monthly e-mail with the latest on domestic terrorism and hate
groups.
The Google
of dictionary searches. Type in a word or phrase and Onelook searches
dozens of dictionary and translation links worldwide.
Free
on-line translation services for converting that foreign newspaper
article.
ARIN, the
American Registry for Internet Numbers. This will tell you who owns a
certain website.
RIPE
Network Coordination Center - Europe's version of ARIN
Asia
Pacific Information Network Center - Asia's version of ARIN
Trace an
e-mail, ping a machine, look-up a DNS, free from the comfort of your desk.
Very easy to use and comes in handy when trying to verify those annoying
virus e-mails. Another free trace route locator service. This one provides you with maps as well as longitude and latitude for you GPS fans. This is my favorite because it does all of the IP searches above in one place.
Has links
to laws in all fifty states, federal law and international law so you can
see if that stalker from Transylvania is really breaking the law in his
country. Also has links for legal articles worldwide, a good resource.
Very interesting stuff.
The
Law Guru
Similar to
findlaw.com plus it has some fun stuff like the "weird Law" section. For
example in California, women may not drive in a house coat, and my
favorite, it is a misdemeanor to shoot at any kind of game from a moving
vehicle, unless the target is a whale. Only in California folks.
To explain
this site it is easiest to let the government do it in their own words:
“Acting under the directive of the leadership of the 104th Congress to
make Federal legislative information freely available to the Internet
public, a Library of Congress team brought the THOMAS World Wide Web
system online in January 1995, at the inception of the 104th Congress.”
The World Health
Organization
The World
Heath Organization is the United Nations site for world health. Some links
have an e-mail subscription service that can push you outbreak
information. Useful for advising your employees about health hazards prior
to traveling.
iJet
Intelligent Risk Systems
Some of the
core services offered by all three include:
They have a
product called the Orion CT Portal. It is comprised of approximately 100
gigabytes of public source terrorism and other related data. Information
is collected from sources around the world, including the AP wire feed,
the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), Reuters, Lexis/Nexis,
government sites, radical websites, and the Internet. You can define
specific key word searches within the system and the program will
constantly comb the internet and the Orion internal database looking for
matches. That information is then posted in real time for you to search
and analyze. The service also provides canned reports on a variety of
terrorism related subjects. Mostly used by government and law enforcement
agencies, it is slowly becoming available to corporations.
Formerly
know under www.keepmedia.com, this is a
great inexpensive research service that provides unlimited access to over
324 publications dating back 12 years. It has three storage and retrieval
features: My History: Allows you to view links to the articles you have
already viewed, sorted in a variety of ways. My Kept Articles: Allows you
to store the articles you have already viewed and save them sorted in a
variety of ways. My Suggested Articles: The service conducts automatic
searches for additional similar material based upon the articles you have
already read and has them ready for you to read when you sign on. It saves
you a lot of research time. This is one of the most user friendly and
useful services I have encountered.
ProQuest is
the granddaddy of on-line information services. They have been in business
for many many years under different owners and started when microfiche was
the latest technology. Their main product is Proquest 5000: One of the
most comprehensive digital databases in the world. It includes in-depth
coverage of more than 7,400 publications, and millions of complete
articles are available online in various formats. Some newspaper articles
for example go back to the 1800’s. Great service but it costs a few bucks.
It is worth it if you have the budget and need. They offer a free trail
service.
Stamps.com
You may
recognize them as an online postage service. But what you may not realize
is their service is linked to the U.S. Postal Service address directory.
When you enter an address to print a stamp, the service checks the
information against the USPS address database. If the address is good, you
get a stamp. If the address is bad, no stamp, and you will then realize
that the person you are looking for may have provided an incorrect
address. It’s a good round-about way to verify and match people with
addresses especially in fraud cases. It is really inexpensive, the price
of a postage stamp.
Classmates.com As the baby boomer population ages and becomes nostalgic, more and more people are joining Classmates.com. Here you may find that former employee you need to testify in a lawsuit or you could use it to verify an employee’s background. I recently had an employee that listed schools on their application different from those they listed on Classmates.com. That was an interesting conversation. Classmates.com recently added a business to business alumni service. Type in a company name and you will find past and present employees that have joined business groups. To access multiple groups you will have to build a profile and belong to each group separately. Easy enough to do but you may need more than one e-mail address. For a small fee you can get the deluxe service that allows you deeper levels of information and the ability to contact people through a blind e-mail service.
Islandnet.com
Ever wonder
how that stalker found out where that celebrity or public figure lives? Do
you need to reach a public figure or check to see if your CEO is listed in
public records? This may be the site you are looking for. It is a pay
service that has what they say they have.
The gold
standard in public record searches. FCRA compliant. Fees are based upon
per record searched and are very reasonable, $10 to $25 for most records.
Now that you have established redundant communication systems and set up
multiple streams of incoming data, how can you save and analyze an
overwhelming amount of information?
SRA
Orion Magic
SRA Orion
Magic is a must have for anyone serious about processing and analyzing
large volumes of dissimilar information. Law enforcement has solved many
high profile cases using this software. Their website says it best:
“enable the entire knowledge management process from collection to search
to analysis to reporting.” With Magic you can cut, paste, categorize, save
and index data from almost any digital source, then carve through and
analyze gigabits of data in a few seconds using easy to formulate queries.
It is not a relational database but it is the next best thing. Think of it
as a super sophisticated internet browser that allows you to search for
thousands of words, terms or concepts simultaneously. All thumbs when it
comes to computers? Not to worry, Orion Magic was developed specifically
for you. It is very powerful yet easy to use. Copernic offers an excellent suite of software that helps you manage large volumes of data. Their three big products are:
Adobe Acrobat http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/main.html Is there anyone left besides my 95 year old grandmother that has never heard of Adobe? Maybe, so I need to mention it. We have all received and read Adobe .PDF (Portable Data Files) but have you ever created one yourself? Install Acrobat, print a file then choose Acrobat as you printer. The program will create a digital image of the document in a format you can save and send in both secure and non-secure formats. SRA Orion Magic can not search on the words you can see in Acrobat, but to get around that you can select the document “properties” tab and fill in key search words to describe the document. * * *
So that’s
all there is too it. Beef up your communications, hook up a few dozen
internet services, use some slick data mining software and you’ll have all
the basics you need for a simple and relatively inexpensive information
network.
"How to Catch a Terrorist Without
Hurting Anyone's Feelings"
Copyright © 2005 by Chuck Harold - For
reprint permissions please contact
Chuck Harold |
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