Trusted Emergency Management

Abstract

The ability for emergency first responders to access sensitive information for which they have not been pre-vetted can save lives and property. We describe a trusted emergency management solution for ensuring that sensitive information is protected from unauthorized access, while allowing for extraordinary access to be authorized under the duress of an emergency. Our solution comprises an emergency access control policy, an operational model and a scalable system security architecture. The operational model involves end users who are on call as first responders, providers of critical information, and a coordinating authority. Extraordinary access to information is allowed to occur only during emergencies, and only in a confined emergency partition, which is unavailable before the emergency and can be completely purged after the emergency. As all information remains within its assigned partition, after the emergency the system can meaningfully enforce its pre-emergency access control policy. A major component of the architecture is the end-user device, and we describe mechanisms on the device for secure storage of data, and for management of emergency state, to indicate feasibility.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2009
Accession Number
ADA496552

Entities

People

  • Cynthia E. Irvine
  • Ganesha Bhaskara
  • Paul A Clark
  • Terry Benzel
  • Thuy Nguyen
  • Timothy E. Levin

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Computer Access Control
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Cryptography
  • Disasters
  • Emergency Response
  • First Responders
  • Information Exchange
  • Information Science
  • Information Systems
  • Mobile Devices
  • Operating Systems
  • Personnel Management
  • Security
  • System Software
  • Time Intervals

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Database Systems and Applications
  • Emergency Management and Homeland Security.
  • Strategic Security Studies