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Removing an Enemy's Disguise
Written by Marty Kauchak
A SIGNIFICANT TECHNOLOGY BOOST
Biometrics are measurable, physiological, and/or behavioral characteristics that are distinct and can be used to verify the identity of an individual. Biometrics are enabling SOF and other operators to tie an individual to past acts and aliases or deny access to facilities or data.
DoD is accelerating its efforts to deploy a secure, highly scalable, high capacity and responsive biometric repository and system for use by operators and other service men and women beyond ABIS v4.2. That system is the department’s legacy biometric repository to support the global war on terror. The rapid-prototype system was based on a single modularity biometric system that supported fingerprint matching only.
The department’s biometric mission received a huge boost with the recent roll-out of the latest ABIS-based system, NG-ABIS v1.0.
The DoD/industry team’s effort to field NG-ABIS v1.0 “will increase the number of modalities, improve the match rate [of a person and the live biometrics sample] and speed the response time to ensure the warfighters have what they need,” Dr. Myra Gray, director, Biometrics Task Force, said during a program overview attended by SOTECH. The new system is also projected to supply greater database capacity, faster processing rates, and an interface to existing and planned interagency and DoD systems (including SOCOM’s Special Operations Identity Dominance initiative)—with multimodalities (voice, face and others).
Northrop Grumman Information Technology leads the NG-ABIS industry team. The team’s roster reads like a who’s who list in IT and biometrics: Microsoft, IBM, Symantec, Red Hat, NetIQ, Ideal Innovations Inc., NetApp, Oracle, New Bold Enterprises, Cisco and Identix.
BENEFITS FOR THE WARFIGHTER
DoD’s continued investment and upgrade of the ABIS core enterprise (database, an authoritative repository and a matching engine of systems) have provided operators with early dividends, with the promise of more returns on investment.
The legacy ABIS family “allowed us to roll up over 500 very, very bad people over in the field based only on the ability to make a biometrics match,” Tom Dee, director, Defense Biometrics, in the office of the secretary of defense, said during the briefing. Dee added, “We’ve denied access to thousands of people from our facilities who wanted to get in there but we were able to identify—and who had some nefarious intentions of some sort. We’ve been able to vet hundreds of thousands of people who have required access to our facilities.”
The early results from the delivery of NG-ABIS v1.0 have indicated the newest program sibling is more scalable, provides a much quicker matching capability, has an improved storage capability and provides for multimodal matching. “So, now we are not dependent on fingerprint matches at the national level. We can do iris and are working toward face and other modalities,” Dee elaborated.
Greg Fritz, product director, Biometrics Enterprise Core Capability for project manager, DoD Biometrics, explained the value of additional modalities, palm prints in this case, in NG-ABIS. “Is there anyone who can, for example, pick up a 155 mm projectile, often used in improvised explosive devices, with just your fingertips, and carry it and then bury it? Very few people are aware of this capability. Using palm prints is so important.”
In one specific NG-ABIS v1.0 success, an in-theater suspect was apprehended using 11 “touch points.” A program spokesperson explained, “What that represents is 11 occurrences of our forces interacting with that guy. It could have been a border patrol, on the battlefield, attempting to gain base access, or even from improvised explosive devices. What NGA[BIS] was able to do is take all these other biometrics touch points, pull them together and link them to a specific person. And that’s the real power of NGA—that we can take all of these different touch points and collections in the times we came across that person, and pull them together into one positive identity.”
As the NG-ABIS repository is being populated with face, iris and palm data from the field, higher match rates of individuals have been achieved during the first month of operation. “Multimodal, other non-fingerprint biometrics including multimodal, added several percentage points to the number of matches we were able to get,” said the program spokesperson.
NG-ABIS v1.0 is also reported to provide a customer response time 14 to 28 times faster than the earlier prototype. Neal Gieselman, systems operations manager, ABIS, Northrop Grumman, elaborated on this attribute. “We are able to provide a search response any where in the world within two minutes.” This response time exceeded the warfighter requirement of 15 minutes and is for flash-precedence traffic.
The decision on which modalities will be added to NG-ABIS resides with the director, Biometrics Task Force.
TOWARD A PROGRAM OF RECORD
The near-term path forward for NGABIS includes establishing a continuity of operations capability, which will provide a backup (third) location for operations and support. “We are also working on the technology refresh for transactions and other requirements,” Fritz said.
The ABIS program is on a fast track toward being designated a program of record.
The program originated as a theatergenerated requirement and was initially addressed in 2007 as capability-based assessment under the direction of U.S. Joint Forces Command. In 2008, the Joint Requirements Oversight Council approved an initial capabilities document, and the OSD staff approved an acquisition decision memorandum.
“So we have a program, through an acquisition decision memorandum, we have the requirements initiated, and now we need the resources—we’re looking at future years dollars [fiscal year 2010] to do that,” OSD’s Dee stated. “So when the acquisition effort and the dollars come together that’s when we have a program of record, and we are targeting FY10.” ♦