Share and Share Alike

Filed in archive News on July 11, 2007

The US government is one step closer to being able to share data across agencies. Since September 11, 2001, the government has tried to find a safe, secure way to share data among agencies, but to no avail. In passing legislation that secured confidential information, the government effectively tied its own hands. That legislation, coupled with heightened security measures overall, has created a data vacuum - information goes into a government database but cannot be retrieved by agencies working in tangent.

Enter the Secure Information Sharing Infrastructure (SISA). Thanks to a collaboration with Cisco, Microsoft and EMC, the government will finally get its wish. The trio of companies is working to give the US a system of information sharing that allows only authorized users to access the information. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Well, when you're the US government and you've set the rules, you must hold the standard. However, this may not be the customized brain dump one might expect with three corporate giants involved. Instead, they will provide commercial, off-the-shelf products, with smaller vendors contributing specific technologies. However, each entity will contribute its own expertise: Cisco will provide secure networks and data protection, Microsoft, identity management and operating systems, and EMC, storage.