Every nation in this world is concerned about terrorist attack. After every act of terrorism, lot of attention shifts towards how intelligence is gathered, analyzed, and disseminated to protect the country against such acts. For intelligence to be useful, it must be presented in a meaningful way and must be actionable.
Government agencies and intelligence networks have often relied on communication surveillance to crack information. Listening into conversations, procuring documents, and cracking the secret messages codes are the routine work for them. The data is collected from several sources, at a very fast pace, in well-structured and semi or unstructured form.
Major national security big data challenges are-
- Maritime security
- Cyber security
- Money laundering
- Multi-INT analysis
- Space situational awareness
Maritime security is one of the newest buzzwords of international relations. It is a term that highlights the new challenges and rallies support for handling these. Maritime security is related to the prevention of intentional damage through subversion, terrorism, or sabotage.
Cyber security includes technologies, processes, and practices that are intended to shield networks, programs, computers, and data from damage, unauthorized access or hacking or attack. When it comes to computing world, security has both cyber security and physical security.
Money laundering enables criminals to turn their illegally obtained money or black money into legitimate funds. It is a process used by criminals to transform their “dirty funds” into “clean funds.”
Multi INT is the blend of distinct types of data collection to deliver a complete operating picture for the warfighter. It has included signal intelligence or SIGINT, and measurement and signal intelligence or MASINT.
SSA or Space Situational Awareness has different meaning for different people, but in its broadest view, it is knowledge of our near-space environment. National security conducts special SSA programs to gather data of their near-space environment. It includes the use of advanced satellites that gather all crucial data related to nation security.
What are the big data initiatives for R&D?
- Advance state-of-the-art core technologies required to gather, store, preserve, analyze, manage, and share bulk data.
- Harnessing advance technologies to boost the pace of discovery in science and engineering, strengthen our national security, and alter education material.
- Expand the workforce needed to develop and leverage Big Data analytics Solutions.
What are the challenges for national security big data?
There are total seven tripping hazards ahead for national security big data. Let’s learn about them –
- Government budget process
The government budget process includes several stages –
- Agency develops or creates investment plans
- Agency sends budget request to president
- President revises budget with agency
- After revision, budget plan is submitted to government
- Government debates budget and issues appropriations bills
- President signs budget
- Agencies have funds available to spend
- Government Acquisition process
It includes –
- Integrated defense acquisition
- Technology
- Logistics life cycle management system
- Siloed and proprietary systems
IT systems of government have been procured, developed, accredited, and regulated as standalone systems. The systems include data types-
- Video
- Lidar
- Image
- Biometric
- Text
- Audio
Data balkanization and compartmentalization
- Government Privacy obligations and data mining restrictions
- Constitution protection
- Privacy policy
- Privacy impact assessment
- People protection
- Personnel system lag
- Austere deployment environments
- Limited power and space
- Limited or intermittent bandwidth to end users
Guest article written by: Business Intelligence Analyst with Excellent knowledge on Hadoop/Big data Analytics Solutions at NexSoftSys.com