Northrop Grumman Corporation went live at the Pentagon April 1 with the secure organizational messaging services of the “Decision Agent” following several months of installation and testing by the company’s California Microwave Systems business unit.
Installed and managed by the Pentagon Telecommunications Center (PTC), which supports over 30,000 users and 1,000 organizations, “Decision Agent” is designed to provide an enterprise-wide information profiling and management portal for the Defense Messaging System (DMS) Version 3.0.
“The ‘Decision Agent’ has been instrumental in allowing us to provide protected message traffic for our customers,” said Marvin Owens, director of the PTC. “It has proved to be a tremendous tool in helping us achieve our mission of implementing DMS in the Pentagon as well as for our other customers worldwide.”
The new system at the PTC supports DMS communications for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Army Operations Center and the military services headquarters’ staffs. In addition, it provides a communication gateway that permits interoperability between Department of Defense organizations that use DMS and allied NATO and non-Defense Department organizations that use legacy systems.
“By enabling DMS messaging without FORTEZZA cards and readers, and by eliminating the need to install add-ons to end-user devices, ‘Decision Agent’ will allow the Pentagon and other government agencies to reduce the costs and manpower requirements traditionally associated with DMS implementations,” said John Haluski, vice president of California Microwave Systems’ Information Systems unit.
The “Decision Agent” consists of a suite of integrated software applications that run on a Windows 2000 server. These include Northrop Grumman’s LMDS MailRoom, the most powerful profiling engine currently available, and Engenium Corporation’s Semetric, a knowledge-based retrospective search engine.
The system enhances DMS functionality by automating the processes of identifying, filtering and distributing military organization messages to specified addresses and recipients, based on interest profiles and security clearances.
“Decision Agent” provides other enhancements as well, including virus checks, security checks for possible mislabeling of messages and attachments, Web-based message preparation and Boolean logic keyword and concept searches.
