Page 42 - Federal Computer Week, May/June 2019

FirstNet
network. It has multiple geographi- cally distributed core sites to provide redundancy and high performance, and it offers end-to-end encryption, round-the-clock security monitoring, and identity, credential and access
management capabilities to ensure that the right people are on the network at the right time.
“The Navy is looking at how FirstNet is going to be able to provide the Navy and the public safety community and
first responders with a very high set of quality-of-service and preemption capa- bilities,” Leff said. “I think that it’s going to be unmatched and exceed anything that the public safety community has experienced before.” n
FirstNet:Two years in
Two years after the First Responder Network Authority awarded a 25-year, multibillion-dollar contract to AT&T to build a nationwide public safety network, efforts to expand the infrastructure and increase the resources for responders are picking up steam.
More than 5,000 agencies have sub- scribed to the network in the past two years, said Jeff Bratcher, FirstNet’s chief technol- ogy and operations officer. And there has been a 100 percent increase in adoption in the past six months.
To meet the needs of those subscribers, FirstNet officials are boosting the capabilities of their Innovation and
Test Lab in Boulder, Colo., so that
they can conduct scenario-based testing of the network’s mission- critical functions and features.
Bratcher said special equipment allows FirstNet to simulate a cell site “with thousands of simultaneous data sessions and ensure that the FirstNet subscribers’ priority and preemption features are working as designed and implemented.”
tions, as well as a number of cloud services for storage and content delivery.
AT&T and FirstNet have tested and eval- uated all the apps in the catalog. FirstNet Certified apps meet criteria for relevance, security and data privacy and have under- gone evaluations for availability, resiliency and scalability. A new category, FirstNet Listed, gives developers a faster and more cost-effective path to approval. Those apps still have the same relevance, security and data privacy requirements, but security scans are completed by FirstNet during
the review process at no added cost to the
and connected cars via in-vehicle systems to let them know when emergency vehicles are nearby or on scene.
• Lookout for Work, which protects first responders’ devices from phishing attacks, spyware, out-of-date operating systems and rogue Wi-Fi networks.
• NetMotion Mobility, a mobile virtual private network that helps optimize and secure application traffic.
• PulsePoint, which crowdsources imme- diate care by alerting CPR-trained mem- bers of the public about nearby cardiac emergencies.
• Pulsara, a mobile platform that enables medical provid- ers to exchange patient-specific information.
• SceneDoc, a tool that helps investigators in the field collect and manage evidence.
•TangoTango, an app that fea- tures encrypted push-to-talk voice capabilities, GPS location services, emergency alerting and text/multi- media messaging.
Furthermore, FirstNet’s API Catalog features 25 application programming interfaces and soft-
ware development kits from six suppliers. The APIs enable services such as texting to landlines and 911, single sign-on, call management, and better integration with FirstNet-approved hardware and push-to- talk services.
FirstNet also recently entered into a partnership with the University of Missis- sippi Medical Center to bring high-speed communications to rural parts of the state and power remote medical applications in the event of a natural disaster or other emergency.
— Susan Miller
In addition, FirstNet officials are working on a partnership with MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory to conduct research into video analytics for public safety use cases, he said.
Besides growing the communications infrastructure, FirstNet is also adding to the store of mobile devices and apps that have been certified for use by first responders.
So far, the National Institute of Standards andTechnology has approved more than 70 smartphones, laptops, tablets, modems and hotspots for use on the network. In addition, FirstNet’s App Catalog features dozens of communications tools, situational aware- ness solutions and mobile security applica-
developer, AT&T officials said.
Some of the services available exclusive-
ly to FirstNet subscribers in the App Catalog include:
• 10-21 Video, an app that streams live video from body-worn cameras and shares it with other users.
• Esri’s Explorer for ArcGIS, a lightweight mapping app and data viewer that allows first responders to create, mark up and interact with maps, even when they’re off- line.
• HAAS Alert, a service that delivers real- time alerts to drivers via smartphone apps
42 May/June 2019 FCW.COM
The Boulder Innovation and Test Lab