What are government’s security weak spots?

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Government Security, Technology

By Robin Hicks | 19 January 2010

Microsoft’s global public safety and national security head Tim Bloechl has a Facebook account, but doesn’t trust social media as a reliable source of intelligence. Not yet anyway.

When confronted with a threat to public safety, dealing with it should be second nature. So says Tim Bloechl, Microsoft’s Managing Director for Worldwide Public Safety and National Security.

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Bloechl joined Microsoft from the United States Department of Defence, where he was Director of the International Information Assurance Program responsible for policy and program development as well as interagency, international and operational cyber security coordination.

Systems should be in place, and working together, to allow public sector bodies to use information to respond in time and to good effect - without the joins in the system slowing things down, he says.

Since taking on his role, Bloechl has observed two key weak spots in the capacity of Asian government systems to cope with security situations. One is interoperability.

“Common and control, situational awareness - there are too many systems that can’t talk to each other,” he says. “Technology is there to make systems effective. There is a clear need for open standards to enable government systems to work together, otherwise they will fall behind.”

The other lacking faculty in government departments is the ability to work collaboratively, says Bloechl. “It’s one thing to put technology in the hands of operators. It’s quite another thing for them to know how to use it.” He cites the US Air Force as an entity that needed ICT training to ensure that their response mechanism was “second nature”.

Microsoft honed in on the public sector as a customer base in 2000, launched a security unit in 2005 and now counts the US army as its biggest customer globally. In Asia, seven of Microsoft’s top 10 customers are public sector bodies, the biggest being ministries of the interior, the police and the military.

Microsoft’s latest security offering is the Intelligence Framework, which enables law enforcement organisations to share information and provide a coordinated approach to tackling security situations. But one of the areas Microsoft has yet to tackle is how to use social media to react to security situations quicker. Bloechl has his reservations, but doesn’t discount it as a useful tool in the future.

“I’m a user of Facebook, but only with people I know. It comes down to trust. I trust the information my Facebook friends give me. But if you start to trust sources you’re not hundred per cent sure on, you can quickly become overwhelmed. It only adds to the fog of war.”

Data accuracy is the big worry, says Bloechl – disinformation. “It’s sad to think that this could happen in a disaster situation, but you have to be mindful of those who will give false information on purpose.”

He speaks for many in government when he says it’s an area in need of exploration.