Solution Overview
Cisco Army Solutions: Enhance Home Station
Operations for Deployment Preparation
Photo Courtesy of U.S. Army: Adam Gramarossa
Challenge
Armies 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. Realtime 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.
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 Planning
In the past, army logistics personnel have used
spreadsheet files to track equipment data
manually. Maintaining multiple spreadsheets
Photo Courtesy of U.S. Army: Maj. John H. Alderman IV
and manual processes for asset tracking
has led to inconsistent data and duplication
For example, if a network installation in the field experiences a
of efforts. Access to current operational and
physical attack, personnel at the command center must try to
logistical information during deployment planning is essential.
assess the threat level. Staff must have real-time, up-to-the-minute
The commander and staff must be able to share information
data to respond properly. Data about the attack may come from
in confidence, and only those staff members with the relevant
disparate sources and the technologies used to collect this data
privileges are provided access to sensitive information. An
may not be interoperable. Denial of Service attacks can infiltrate
understanding of the status of stocking levels and the ability to
your IP network, making access to data even more problematic.
update them from remote databases at a shipping warehouse
speeds up and facilitates deployment planning.
Cisco leads the unified communications industry with complete
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 Security
In 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.
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 networkprotocols 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 denialof-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.
Solution Overview
Centralized Operations Over the Cisco Intelligent
Information Network
Critical 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.
Photo Courtesy of U.S. Army: Maj. Deanna Bague, Fort Bliss Public Affairs
Photo Courtesy of U.S. Army: Spc. Evan D. Marcy
Innovative Solutions for the World’s Military
As the leader in defense networking, Cisco provides missioncritical 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
Solution Overview
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 missioncritical 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 Information
Learn more about Cisco solutions for the army and other
global government solutions and services for defense at
www.cisco.com/go/defense.
Photo Courtesy of U.S Army: Sgt. Matthew C. Cooley, 15th Sustainment Brigade Public Affairs
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 Solutions
•Cisco 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).
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.
•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.
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