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Solutions Report A report on the 2nd Annual SAP NS2 Solutions Summit

How to Advance the National Security Mission with

Innovation: Experts Weigh In |

page 8

The “New Normal” in U.S. National Security Insights from Fran Townsend, Stan McChrystal, and Jason Matheny pages 2, 4 and 6

A Conversation with SAP NS2’s

Mark Testoni page 12

Big

Data Is Solved! page 7

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Contents

SAP NS2 Solutions REPORT

Prioritizing Threats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Frances Townsend, chair of the board of directors for SAP NS2 and a former homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush, focused on the changing geopolitical landscape and the fact that national security and foreign aid are paramount to U.S. success in the national and international communities.

Looking for Meaning and Agility in a Sea of Information . . . . .4 In the current technological age, almost all of the focus is on developing the latest and greatest capabilities. But for people like Army General Stan McChrystal (Ret.) there is a question running underneath the stream of new gadgets and gizmos: How can we make sense of all that data?

What Makes Good Forecasting Teams? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 If you want to find an analyst who is really good at forecasting geopolitical or other future events, don’t necessarily look to those who are believed to be the best experts, according to Jason Matheny, program manager, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity.

Analysis at the Speed of Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 With its ability to provide near-instant analysis of very large data sets from a huge variety of sources, in-memory computing technology brings a level of flexibility and speed to intelligence missions that can actually change the way analysts do their work, according to Bob Palmer, senior director of SAP NS2.

Intel and the “New Normal” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The intelligence community must change its approach to information in order to succeed in the “new normal” of widely distributed technology and a weakened ability to maintain secrets, according to members of an expert panel at the SAP NS2 Solutions Summit.

New Solutions for New Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Displays at the SAP NS2 Solutions Summit highlighted world-class solutions for national security and critical infrastructure organizations.

Solutions for Insight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Mark Testoni, president of SAP NS2, reviews key challenges facing the national security community, and how technology can help.

Contact

Geospatial Intelligence Forum

Harrison Donnelly, Editor Jeff McKaughan, Editor-in-Chief Laura McNulty, Online Editorial Manager Jennifer Owers, Art Director Sean Carmichael, NS2 Summit Report Correspondent Scott Parker, Associate Publisher Jack Kerrigan, Chief Executive Officer

To Our Readers: Geospatial Intelligence Forum is proud to present this summary of the 2nd Annual SAP NS2 Solutions Summit, sponsored by SAP National Security Services.

With keynote speakers General Stanley McChrystal (Ret.), former commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, and Frances Townsend, chair of the SAP NS2 Board of Directors and former assistant to President George W. Bush for homeland security and counterterrorism, the October 29, 2013, event brought some 400 government executives, program managers, analysts, technical directors, consultants and journalists together to hear from a variety of top experts on how to cope with a “perfect storm” of security challenges.

As covered in the following pages, the summit offered an insightful overview of the “new normal” in U.S. national security, which includes a longer list of more complicated threats; unprecedented cuts in military and intelligence spending; and a tsunami of data being collected by more and more humans, machines and networks.

I would urge readers to spend some time with this report, which shows how, despite what may be the most challenging environment ever for U.S. national security and homeland security organizations, new technologies and solutions from companies such as SAP NS2 and others are making it possible to improve national security mission performance at an affordable cost.

Constance Kerrigan, Chief Financial Officer & Publisher The SAP NS2 Solutions Report is published by Geospatial Intelligence Forum, a KMI Media Group publication.

All Rights Reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly forbidden. Copyright 2013.

KMI Media Group 15800 Crabbs Branch Way, Suite 300 Rockville, MD 20855-2604 USA Telephone: (301) 670-5700 Fax: (301) 670-5701 www.gif-kmi.com

Harrison Donnelly Managing Editor KMI Media Group

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1

Prioritizing Threats

The geopolitical landscape is as convoluted as ever, making every step a difficult one for the U.S. government, says Frances Townsend.

Whether it is Edward Snowden and his leaking of classified information, the budget crisis and its toll on governmental programs, or the debate on Syria and its use of chemical weapons, there are issues that need to be addressed everywhere you look. With so much on the U.S. government’s plate, what is the best way to move forward?

That was the fundamental question posed by Frances Townsend, chair of the board of directors for SAP NS2, during her keynote address at the company’s Solutions Summit. The prominent former national security official and media commentator, who previously served as homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush, focused her remarks on the changing geopolitical landscape and the fact that national security and foreign aid are paramount to U.S. success in the national and international communities.

In light of the budget crisis and subsequent decreased spending, Townsend expressed concern that foreign aid spending would be cut, a step she argued would be extremely detrimental to U.S. interests. “[Foreign aid] may yet again, and probably will, fall victim to the budget debates. But we have to continue to invest there. Those relationships are incredibly important. And so when we look out among these ungoverned and poorly governed spaces, it doesn’t really always require an American response,” she said.

The “response” that Townsend spoke of refers to direct physical action. But she argued that the U.S. government can, in fact, make foreign aid a priority without having to send more troops. Not only that, but following this particular course of action would save the government money as well.

“The single greatest life insurance policy against having to deploy your own troops is to spend a fraction of what it costs to deploy troops on building capability among your foreign partners so they can fight their own fights, secure their own borders and protect their own people,” said Townsend.

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That’s not to say that there are not events that require a U.S. response, however, with international crises all around the globe demanding consideration. “Proliferation isn’t going away. North Korea continues to have their nuclear program, Iran has a strategic priority in terms of their program, and that has spurred an arms race throughout the Middle East. There is no question that our Arab allies feel threatened by Iran’s nuclear program, and Syria has taken on a real geopolitical importance,” she warned.

Townsend expanded on the Syria problem, explaining that this crisis is more dire than the rest because of the intensity of suffering, even though the topic has largely slipped from the headlines following the U.S./ Russia/Syria agreement to eliminate chemical weapons from that civil-war-torn nation.

“The victim there on the battlefield is the Syrian civilian population,” she said, adding, “Every day, Syrian civilians continue to be murdered in their homes.”

But that is not the only battlefield we have to worry about, Townsend cautioned.

Americans may also have false conceptions about what is going on in Iraq, she warned, and the fact that troops have been withdrawn does not necessarily mean that all is well.

“Iraq has receded from the headlines, and right now is the bloodiest it has been since

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the height of the Iraq War—more deaths, more explosions, and more bombings now than at the height of what was clearly an emerging civil war in Iraq,” Townsend said.

The former White House adviser also emphasized maintaining international relationships even in the face of differences of opinion, since the nation’s security hinges on these relationships. For example, she focused on little-noticed recent comments from Saudi Arabia regarding future U.S. relations, in which officials threatened a major shift in relations because of their and our governments failing to see eye-to-eye regarding Syria and Iran.

“Usually even when there’s political disagreement at the state level or the diplomatic level, the intelligence and law enforcement relations remain. That’s what I find troubling about the Saudi statements last week. Clearly there’s been a fracturing at the political level.

There’s a disagreement between the king and the president over Syria, over Iran, which is to be expected. But if that also has now resulted in a fracturing of the security relationship, that’s troubling, because normally that’s the thing that quietly survives underneath, and you can’t afford to lose that,” she said.

The task for the U.S. government of determining what to prioritize is made more difficult by recent controversies over secrecy

and U.S. policy. The National Security Agency (NSA) has dominated headlines in recent months, first with the Edward Snowden leaks and then regarding information that they had been spying on various world leaders.

Townsend voiced strong views on the NSA issues, arguing that the government needs privacy in order to do its job, and that any objection to what the NSA has done is incomprehensible. “It’s inexplicable to me the kind of reaction that there’s been. I don’t understand the White House’s reaction, and I certainly don’t understand the reaction in Congress,” she said.

“We’ll get through all that, and the intelligence community has been accused of worse, survived worse, and will emerge stronger for it, because of their ethic of service.

But we have to not apologize for what our priorities are. We have to stop apologizing— and frankly, revealing—what it is we do to protect ourselves. We in the national security community cannot effectively do our jobs

if everything is at risk. Now there are some things we can do to get better at protecting secrets, and I think if we’ve learned anything from this series of leaks, [it’s that] we must get better,” Townsend continued.

Although Townsend sees many reasons for the leaks, she also believes that the key to protecting ourselves lies in a paradigm shift toward moderation in the amount and types of information classified as secret. “There’s no question that we need to classify less— you’ve heard the old adage, ‘If everything’s a priority, nothing’s a priority.’ Absolutely, I would say that, having been inside the belly of the beast, we over-classify—we classify too many things, and we don’t have a system.

“Nobody ever gets in trouble for classifying something; you get in trouble for not classifying enough,” she pointed out. “So we have to change that system and figure out what’s really important. What really needs to be protected, and what are we willing to really fight about if it gets released?

“The most difficult threat is the insider.

And how do we protect ourselves from the insider threat? Yes, there are easy things. We can’t let people download classified material onto thumb drives. But we have to understand—we’ve got to enable our people, trust our people, and then have systems by which we protect ourselves from the insider threat,” Townsend continued.

In the end, Townsend believes that the only way to navigate the tense global landscape is by virtue of the nation’s intelligence prowess, and that those claiming that NSA is invading the privacy do not see the big picture. But she acknowledges that it is a conversation that needs to be had.

“I would hope that we could have an intelligent conversation, and not just rely on the intelligence community to defend itself.

I think you’ve got to be able to say out loud, and defend the fact that if your allies are talking to your enemies, we want to hear that, and we’re not going to apologize for that.” ■

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3

Looking for Meaning and Agility in a Sea of Information

For former Afghanistan commander Stan McChrystal, learning from mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan is more important than ever.

In the current technological age, almost all of the focus is on developing the latest and greatest capabilities. But for people like Army General Stan McChrystal (Ret.) there is a question running underneath the stream of new gadgets and gizmos: How can we make sense of all that data?

Speaking before the SAP NS2 Solutions Summit, the former commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan emphasized the importance of not just receiving information, but also understanding it.

“It's really easy to get massive amounts of information to any leader inside the organization. But I would argue that understanding it is really not easy, because an understanding takes time to put it together, think about it and discuss it,” said McChrystal.

Speaking from his experience both in Afghanistan and as commander of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from 2003 to 2008, McChrystal

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underscored the importance of structures have trouble adjusta strong relationship between ing to a world in which informasuperiors and subordinates to tion moves at the speed of light. maintaining the steady flow of “All of us are in that stage in information. our lives where “How many we've been Cherreka Montgomery times have you pretty suc@CherrekaM sat down and cessful to this “Connections that written a great point, but we've are global, matter” email about some been successful Gen. Stan McChrystal #SAPNS2Summit really difficult operating in a 29 October subject, and world and playyou've put in all ing under rules the points, and that don't exist at the end you put a recomanymore,” said McChrystal. mendation, and then you send McChrystal highlighted this it to your boss, and what do problem by looking back at the you get back? Two letters—O.K. ways in which the U.S. military Now what does that mean? If operated against terrorist you think about it, if a 22-yeargroups following the September old intelligence analyst sends a 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

50-plus-year-old general or CEO “We were fairly confident a well-thought-out note and because we had this wonderful gets two letters, they're never counterterrorism capability, going to send another, because great intelligence organizations what you've said is 'don’t bother and great forces,” he observed. me.' You may think you are “But the problem was that saying 'good,' but really a gap had grown. They were you've said 'don't bother me,'” faster, more agile and in many McChrystal said. cases leveraged the really Although the information powerful technology better age is here, big, bureaucratic than we did.

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“Even though we were theoretically a very agile force, in fact we were a hierarchical organization of highly trained, well-resourced people who operated in a deliberate fashion,” McChrystal said.

That may have worked when the chief tactic of many international terror groups was to hijack commercial aircraft and hold the passengers as hostages for political demands, he observed.

But then the nature and strategy of terrorist adversaries changed.

“In fact, the charter of JSOC said, ‘Respond to terrorist acts,’ and that's fine if somebody does a hijacking and you can go try to deal with the situation. But if somebody runs planes into buildings and kills people, and they don't ask anything, the only thing you can do in response is pick up the pieces,” McChrystal continued.

In a post-9/11 world, large, set-piece military forces are not as decisive as in the past. That was difficult to comprehend in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.

“If you're a small team, you don't need a big structure,” he observed. “When you start to create Napoleonic-size armies, you need a chain of command, you need communications, you need processes, and those processes are designed to mitigate risk and give structure to increase the ability to execute.

“It was O.K. to be hierarchical and ponderous if you were big enough, because in the past, being big was enough. You could be very inefficient, and nobody could compete with you because you could just crush them,” McChrystal continued.

The underlying theme is the flow of information and its role in creating the speed, agility and adaptability that will be essential characteristics of the

SAP NS2 military force of The former @SAPNS2 the future. commander was Individuals are “The chalcandid on the empowered now. lenge is not going topic of military Large organizations to be to get a lot shortcomings in have to act smaller; goal should be of information—a the Middle East. constant adaptability teenager with a “We didn't under- Gen McChrystal computer can stand Iraq at all, #SAPNS2Summit do that now. The and we understood 29 October problem is going Afghanistan even to be to pull it less.” together, curate it But while it into something that is of value may be easy now to discern to leaders, and not just do this the military’s shortcomings in dump on people who can't take the past, the task will only grow in that amount. So the magic is more daunting in the future as going to be to be able to portray information overload becomes information in a way that an even bigger challenge. shows reality, shows trends and “So here you are, adrift predicts things. There are some in a sea of information, all of fascinating things being done which people say you ought in the commercial world right to know. Why didn't you know now,” McChrystal continued. this? There's certainly plenty

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out there, you could have known it. And now it's going to be even more accessible, because everybody is carrying not just the ability to get information, but also the ability to generate information on a greater level than ever before.

“Massive amounts of information are available, some of which can have value, some of which not, but the key is how we pull that together to make some kind of sense out of it,” McChrystal said.

“The problem now is that things have changed so much and individuals are empowered now. Mass doesn’t work as well anymore. So you’ve got to be a big organization but act as though you’re smaller,” he concluded. ■

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5

What Makes Good Forecasting Teams?

Intelligence research office conducts tournaments to identify analysts who are the best at predicting the future, and combine their predictions smartly.

If you want to find an analyst who is really good at forecasting geopolitical or other future events, don’t necessarily look to those who are believed to be the best experts. Rather, find those who have proven themselves to have a knack for making accurate judgments in general.

As explained by Jason Matheny, program manager, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), that finding comes from the organization’s ongoing staging of “forecasting tournaments” for the modern-day versions of crystal-ball gazers.

“There are people who are really good at making forecasts about geopolitical events,” Matheny told the SAP NS2 Solutions Summit. “In identifying them, we probably shouldn’t rely on the usual measures of expertise or experience, but stage something like a forecasting tournament, in which people make forecasts and you score how well they do. This is a straightforward idea, but implementing it takes a lot of courage.”

Matheny explained IARPA programs in the area this way: “We’ve been organizing forecasting tournaments at IARPA as a way of understanding what works and doesn’t work in making judgments about the world. Whatever problem set you work on, forecasting tournaments are a way of keeping us honest about what we know and don’t know, which methods work and don’t work, and which analysts know things.”

The first program that uses this kind of approach is called Aggregative Contingent Estimation, which combines human judgments in order to make better forecasts, and particularly conditional forecasts of the sort that decision makers really need. “The premise is based on the observation that if you want a really good estimate of something, instead of asking the best expert you know, ask a range of people whose judgment you generally trust, but have different relevant knowledge, information sources and worldviews,” he noted.

“Doing so has two effects,” Matheny continued. “First, you can cancel out random error just by asking lots of different people. Also by having a diverse pool, you cancel out bias.”

In the tournament, researchers ask some 10,000 participants, from grad students to Nobel laureates, a range of different questions about world events. They collect the forecasts every day, and can look at them, often over years, to see which ones are accurate, who is right early, who is right late and who is never right.

“The ability to do this for a range of questions offers a tool that allows you to take the pulse of an analytic community, such as the intelligence community, very quickly. It’s like we have a heart monitor measuring the anxiety of analysts about dozens of questions at any given time—like whether a particular country will test a nuclear weapon by a certain date,” he said.

The research team that has performed best on forecasting is led

by University of Pennsylvania Professors Philip Tetlock and Barbara

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Mellers. They used two methods, both of which reduce errors by about the same amount. “The first is to wait a sufficient period of time to find out who is really good at making accurate forecasts, ask them for their forecasts, and combine them in an unweighted average,” Matheny said. “It turns out there are people who are really good forecasters, and that this is a stable skill. There is something to the way in which a person looks at the world, or a certain set of abilities, that makes their judgments fairly reliable.”

The second method uses all forecasters’ judgments, and weighs and recalibrates them using the information about forecasters that you have learned are predictive of accuracy.

“What you know tends to be less important than how you think,” he said. “The characteristics that are more predictive have to do with flexible cognition and your level of fluid intelligence—to solve problems, think self-critically and update your judgments in the presence of new evidence. We’ve measured that, and weighted individual judgments depending on their score on particular cognitive tasks.”

Training in probabilistic reasoning can alone reduce error by 20 percent, he noted, while a combination of the two approaches reduces error by more than half compared with conventional analytic approaches.

Another IARPA program in this area is called Open Source Indicators. In it, teams of researchers look at data such as web search queries, social media and financial markets, combine the data using machine learning approaches, and then use those learned patterns to predict a future societal event.

“The future of predictive analytics is to combine the best aspects of human judgment and machine learning,” Matheny summed up. He encouraged the audience to try their hand at forecasting by visiting www.goodjudgmentproject.com.

To obtain a copy of Jason’s presentation, please email dni-iarpa-publicaffairs@iarpa.gov. ■

Analysis at the Speed of Thought The SAP HANA data platform has enough flexibility and speed to change the way analysts do their work.

With its ability to provide near-instant analysis of very large data sets from a huge variety of sources, in-memory computing technology brings a level of flexibility and speed to intelligence missions that can actually change the way analysts do their work.

That bold prediction comes from Bob Palmer, senior director of SAP NS2, who foresees a huge impact on the intelligence profession and mission from the recent introduction of SAP HANA, a platform that leverages technological advances in main memory, multicore processing and data management to deliver radically better computing performance at lower costs.

Engineered to provide “analysis at the speed of thought,” the SAP HANA platform not only delivers remarkable increases in processing speed, but also new capabilities in areas such as predictive analysis and activity-based intelligence (ABI).

“Because it can handle both structured and unstructured data, all with the speed of in-memory computing, it empowers analysts to approach the information they need to solve a mission problem in new and different ways,” said Palmer. “The ability to do analysis at the speed of thought on multi-trillion record data sets gives them the ability to work iteratively, at a natural rhythm and in real-time, in order to pursue their analytical outcomes.”

The power of SAP HANA lies in its gamechanging strategy for managing and analyzing big data. Developed in collaboration with Intel Corp., which wrote HANA-specific instruction sets into its newest generation of chips, the platform provides software and hardware that are optimized to deliver breakthrough speed for complex analysis.

SAP HANA embodies a unique approach to the problem of operating on very large data sets, because the logic to be applied to the data—and all of the data that will be subject to processing—are both contained in main memory at all times. External memory—either in solid state or spinning disk drives—is not part of the computational path. Yet because it is based on open standards, SAP HANA can deliver this acceleration to any existing tool or user interface that already is in use.

“Historically, analysts have either worked iteratively on smaller data sets, or they’ve worked on very large data sets in batch mode, with a latency between the desire for an analytical outcome and the fulfillment of that desire,” Palmer explained. “SAP HANA changes that paradigm, in that even very large data sets can be exposed to complex predictive algorithmic processing in sub-second response times.

“For example, analysts can process geospatial data and open source unstructured data all in one platform. It can perform ‘what if’ or predictive analysis on possible future outcomes in just seconds, even on trillions of records,” Palmer continued.

The result is an unprecedented ability to analyze both real-time streaming events and compare them against historical data in timeseries analysis in one platform. “Historically, streaming data is processed separately from historical analysis of data. The difference with SAP HANA is that both those types of data can be handled in one analytical view,” he added.

Another advantage is that the SAP HANA platform can interact easily with other technologies in the enterprise, without the need for esoteric skill-sets or proprietary interfaces.

This accelerates existing tools within the enterprise with the speed of in-memory processing.

That is critical in areas such as ABI, where one of the prerequisites is that the analytical solution must be very fast. “If the data platform only operates in a batch mode, and can only give you a rear-view mirror view of what has already happened, it does not fit well in an ABIbased paradigm,” Palmer observed.

Similarly, predictive analysis is particularly well suited for in-memory data processing.

Because complex predictive algorithms are traditionally very computing-intensive, analysts historically have only used samples of data to run their predictive models, given the slow speed of traditional computing architectures.

“With SAP HANA, by contrast, predictive analysis can be performed on every element of the data set. It’s axiomatic in predictive analysis that the more data points that you use in the algorithm, the more accurate the range of predicted outcomes are,” Palmer said.

SAP HANA is also a strong complement to the Hadoop Distributed File System, which was created to speed work on very large data files.

SAP HANA combined with Hadoop offers the ability to absorb any sort of data needed for the mission or the business into a large unstructured “bit-bucket” file in Hadoop, where it can be accessed from queries in the SAP HANA platform.

“SAP HANA can leverage the ability of a Hadoop system to store multiple petabytes of data, and yet bring to it real-time analysis without the time delay that is usual in the Hadoop batch processing paradigm,” Palmer said. “That’s a great way to leverage the existing investments that an agency has in data infrastructure.” ■

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7

Intel and the “New Normal”

Expert panel probes the implications for U.S. intelligence of widely distributed technology and a weakened ability to maintain secrets.

Left to right: Carmen Medina, Tom Wein, Dr. Victoria Romero, Phil Mudd, Noah Shachtman

The intelligence community must change its approach to information management if it is to succeed in the “new normal” of widely distributed technology and a weakened ability to maintain secrets, according to members of an expert panel at the SAP NS2 Solutions Summit.

Addressing the topic were Carmen Medina, formerly a senior official at the CIA and now at Deloitte; Phil Mudd, another former CIA official now at the Crumpton Group; Victoria Romero of Charles River Analytics; Noah Shachtman of Foreign Policy magazine; and Tom Wein of the Behavioral Dynamics Institute. Led by SAP NS2 National Vice President Cherreka Montgomery, the panelists engaged in a wide-ranging conversation that mixed freewheeling analysis and incisive insights into the information challenges facing the IC. Shachtman began by defining the new normal in contrast

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with the recent past. “If you look at the last dozen years or so, there are certain assumptions you can make. When the U.S. was taking on irregular foes, there was an assumption of superior fire power, vastly superior technology, and that what you learned from that technology could generally be kept secret. Now at least two of those assumptions are coming undone—secrecy, and on the technology front, where you have to be careful not to assume a technology edge as well.

“In the new normal, you have to assume that the raw technological edge isn’t going to be enjoyed, and even when it is, what you learned from that edge will only be enjoyed for a brief period of time,” he said.

“The IC and national security establishment are finding themselves in a completely different information environment, and have been slow to adjust to it,” said Medina. “Part of the reason

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we were slow was that a lot of this stuff wasn’t secret. One of the new normals that will emerge from the Snowden case and others is that the traditional secret intelligence information that the community has relied on is going to decline in certain areas.”

“There is a couple of hundred years of history of being able to keep diplomatic correspondence relatively secure, at least for a short period of time, but that window of time is going to close,” added Shachtman. “The difference is that rather than giving information to your opponent, you are giving it to everyone. There is going to have to be a rethinking of how you conduct diplomacy, and whom you interface with.”

But on the flip side, analysts also can benefit from exposure to vast quantities of hithertounreachable data in the form of the explosion of social media, as Romero pointed out. “One of the most interesting and important

aspects of the new normal is that we’re no longer limited to the opinions of leaders and spokespeople, but now have insight into the thoughts of everyday people that we never had before. This is a tremendous amount of data, and it opens an area that we never had before.

Romero continued: “What this new data source gives us is the ability to look at the thoughts of people around the world and understand the threats and fears that they talk about. Then we can compare that with the behavior that we see there,” and draw new insights.

One interesting area of social media mining is in looking for the linguistic indicators that a group of people is radicalizing politically and possibly moving toward terrorist action. “One of the primary indicators is the amount of dehumanization language,” Romero explained. “This is data that we couldn’t have gotten even

five years ago. We hear them, but they’re really talking to one another. We’ve got to look at social media and find the groups before they begin to form.”

But overall, the U.S. counter-radicalization strategy is piecemeal and disjointed, said Mudd, contrasting it with the highly touted British strategy in that area.

“My own instinct is to focus on behavior rather than attitudes,” said Mudd. “The U.S. government is never going to be credible in pronouncing the meaning of theological concepts within Islam. Anyway, social science has shown that attitudes are not good predictors of behavior.

“Tech can only do so much.

If you buy a new technology,

you have to put the culture in around it—dedication to assumption checking, monitoring and oversight. If you’re going to spend money, put the other stuff around it,” Mudd added.

Policy also is limited in its ability to deter “lone wolf” terrorists, Wein noted. “Lone wolves are incredibly difficult to find and stop. But that may not matter so much, because while they may cause havoc and tragedy, they’re generally not enough to affect policy. So we have to frame these attacks in ways that people understand that they may happen.

There is no 100 percent solution, but you can reduce these.”

Along with new technologies and analytical methods, panelists also called for new approaches to thinking and training within the IC.

“One of the challenges we would get lots of resumes, but it have is that 10 years ago, the peois possible that the people who ple who could manipulate that truly thought creatively did not kind of information were experts,” see the IC as a place to be, and said Mudd. “But we’re starting if they got there, they soon left. to realize that the Increasingly, young best analysts are people view the Aaron Hopp not the experts, but IC as a place they @TheHoppNet the people who ask would like to work, Phillip Mudd at #sapns2summit: The the best questions. because of the misbest analysts are the That aggregation sion, but they have people who ask the of data is going to to pay too high a best questions, not the require more and cost for it. best experts. more analytical “When I see 29 October skill—not expert people who’ve skill, but the skill to left the IC, the look at things in a different way.” number one reason for leaving is CIA veteran Medina adthe culture—that they’re being dressed similar concerns. “I asked to live in a way that runs worried when I was at the agency counter to their peer group. An that our culture was excluding organization that can’t adjust to the cognitive diversity that we modernity will not long survive,” needed to deal with problems. We she warned. ■

SAP’S AUTHORIZED SPATIAL INTEGRATOR • Real Time Situational Awareness • Advancing Spatial Capabilities in SAP HANA • Building SAP Mobile & Desktop Spatial Solutions • Modeling Infrastructure Assets • Associating, Visualizing, & Analyzing Data Quickly

critigen.com

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New Solutions for New Challenges Summit displays world-class solutions for national security and critical infrastructure organizations. issues as they arise, and preventing problems before they occur.

Real Time Situational Awareness With Real Time Situational Awareness solutions from SAP NS2, national security and critical infrastructure organizations can associate, visualize, and analyze data from disparate systems to gain a comprehensive, real-time understanding of current and emerging conditions.

SAP’s high-performance Real Time Data Platform can quickly—and on demand—correlate information coming from a multitude of high velocity data sources. The platform also provides a means of initiating responses as the interconnections among data are exposed. The benefits include faster, more accurate and more automated decision making, which is crucial to saving lives and staying on top of emerging crises.

Information Integration National security and critical infrastructure organizations cannot afford to run their operations on questionable data. With SAP Data Services and SAP Information Steward solutions, users can integrate, transform, improve, and deliver trusted data to support critical missions and business processes.

SAP Data Services enables you to gain a complete view of information by accessing and combining data—of any size and from any data source—for contextual insight and clear meaning. You can access, integrate and process structured and unstructured content from a variety of data sources across your enterprise. You can also analyze linguistics to extract information, create semantic metadata, and analyze text in 31 languages to discover entities, relationships and sentiments. These tools help customers gain significant insights into current conditions, identify emerging trends, and proactively respond to opportunities and risks.

With SAP Data Services, you can also manage data integrity by correcting data

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provides users with new ways to examine their data and understand the underlying dynamics by drilling down into the details.

Actionable Insights and Big Data Analytics

Smart Mobility and Apps

While federal budget cuts and mission realignments are bringing about many changes in U.S. national security, the fundamental need for actionable insights into the operations of an organization has not changed. In fact, keeping up with demands and expectations is even more challenging amid an explosion of data that needs to be analyzed, understood, and turned into action.

The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is a flexible, scalable information infrastructure designed to present crucial data to analysts and others in a user-friendly, graphical way so that they can glean actionable information quickly, without having to wait for service from the I.T. shop.

It guides users through their information to gain faster, more accurate, and more actionable insights into the key performance indicators of any mission. SAP BusinessObjects

With SAP solutions for secure mobility, delivered in the most secure environments

by SAP NS2, you can make your missioncritical information securely available at all echelons of the organization, from highly connected CONUS environments to “occasionally connected” deployments in the field.

SAP is the only vendor that can provide customers with not just individual mobile solutions, but rather a complete, end-to-end suite of solutions that securely mobilizes the business processes of entire organizations.

The SAP Mobile Platform is an on-premise or cloud-based mobile application development platform that accelerates the development and delivery of secure, highly scalable mobile applications on any device.

Users can meet FIPS 140-2 and HSPD-12 security requirements; deploy their own secure and scalable enterprise app store;

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and embrace “bring your own device” with confidence.

collaboration among various units and commands; measure ROI and key performance indicators; and drive accountability through clear, efficient reporting.

possible. With the SAP solution, users gain a real-time view into operations and logistics, allowing them to operate in a more preventative and efficient mode.

Maintenance

Geospatial with SAP HANA

The adoption of condition-based maintenance—using real-time data to prioritize and optimize maintenance operations—is well underway within the Department of Defense for all forms of equipment. While this technology does help improve performance and safety levels, it rarely reduces costs. Defense and intelligence organizations need a highly efficient, affordable solution that provides real-time analysis of massive quantities of data.

By leveraging the speed and power of the SAP HANA “in-memory” data management platform, SAP Predictive Analytics meets that need, enabling organizations to rapidly analyze collected maintenance data in an iterative manner that was previously not

SAP NS2 has joined forces with Esri, a leading geographic information system (GIS) and location analytics provider, to more deeply integrate GIS solutions with platforms and enterprise applications from SAP to improve customers’ speed, efficiency and decision-making. The combined solution offers organizations the ability to enrich SAP Business Suite applications with geographic content; rapidly process spatial, location, and enterprise data using the SAP HANA platform in real time; visualize geographic information in maps, graphs, and charts using tools from the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio; and deliver applications for front line personnel using the SAP Mobile Platform. ■

Performance Management SAP’s Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solutions—delivered in the most secure environments by SAP NS2—empower defense and intelligence organizations to operate at peak efficiency with the world’s most respected business platform. Easy to deploy and use, the SAP business platform can handle the full range of mission-critical business tasks, as well as the interdependencies between various units’ actions and decisions.

Managers can leverage information from a variety of authoritative information sources, instead of needing to oversee constant manual updates.

SAP EPM will help you prioritize initiatives; allocate resources; translate agency goals into department-specific metrics that everyone can understand; facilitate

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Solutions for Insight

Mark Testoni, president of SAP NS2, reviews key challenges facing the national security community, and how technology can help.

Q: What are the key

challenges facing the national security community today?

A: There are several. First, we face many more diverse and complex threats, from the dispersion of al-Qaida, to Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, narco-traffickers, cyber criminals, domestic terrorists and more.

Second, there is so much more national security information to process. Going back a decade or so, we still focused primarily on obtaining secret information about our enemies.

There was no Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr or texting, and until recently, these information sources were not a part of the national security discussion. Today, there is much more information to manage and potentially to derive insights from.

Third, the economic situation is extremely challenging. The reality is that spending is going down, with no increases for the Department of Defense or the intelligence community. Everybody is looking for ways to get more out of a declining pool of resources.

Also, information security is paramount and offers more challenges in this environment.

Ubiquitous access to data drives geometric growth in potential vulnerabilities. Any solution set must account for these cyber threats.

But where there’s a challenge, there is an opportunity.

NS2’s value proposition is right in the center of these challenges—providing solutions that help organizations get the most insight in the shortest amount of

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time from their oceans of data— and doing it in the most secure environments.

Q: How can I.T.

innovation help meet these challenges, and what are the key factors to ensure that technology plays a useful role?

A: If you take a look at our customers in defense and related areas, they're really most concerned about two or three things. One is leveraging existing environments that have worked well in the past but now are faced with an overwhelming amount of new information, and the need to integrate and draw insights from the combination of new sources and old.

Another big concern is the cost of dealing with all that data.

Our customers are feeling a tremendous amount of pain in

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having to deal with the legacy cost models that are still out there. In the “new normal,” the old models are placing severe burdens on customers. It’s not just software licensing; it’s people, including all those doing analytical work. One of the challenges in moving away from those old models will be change management—that is, there are a lot of players making a lot of money under the old models. If we are to meet our national security needs, then all of this will have to change.

Q: Turning

specifically to the capabilities offered

by SAP NS2, how is your company addressing the problems of big data?

A: In just the last few years, humanity has doubled the amount of information ever created in the history of the world. That’s

a destabilizing requirement. We can’t take that kind of quantum leap in information and process it through traditional methods.

Real time, in-memory data platforms offer huge potential to help meet today’s and tomorrow’s needs by offering a quantum leap in data management and analytics. SAP HANA is a flexible, multipurpose data platform capable of real-time assessment of ‘big data’ to make it more manageable and actionable. That’s a dynamic transition in technology that’s going to help our customers meet their everincreasing data demands.

We have customers in the commercial sector as well as in government who are leveraging SAP HANA today and achieving substantial improvements in effectiveness.

On the business side, we're the new alternative in the market, so we are unencumbered by the business models of the past.

We offer new and different kinds of business models and costeffective terms that are more attractive to customers who are in search of cost savings. These options include demand-based licensing models that are similar to a cloud offering or the software as a service model.

Q: Your company promotes the idea of combining SAP HANA with Hadoop to achieve better performance. Please explain.

A: Without going into the technical details, Hadoop is an open source solution for data storage.

Companies were seeing an explosion of information, and were tired of paying other companies to store their data. Hadoop is an inexpensive way to store data since the hardware involved is generic and inexpensive, and there is no fee for using the software.

In places like the intelligence community and Amazon, Hadoop is an excellent tool for taking raw information and storing it. However, an open source solution like Hadoop can become very costly if you have to rely on technical talent to build custom data-extraction capabilities. However, with HANA, you can bring in subsets of the vast amounts of the stored information, and query or analyze it much more effectively, without relying on data scientists. You can obtain insights and inferences in seconds or minutes, not days.

By putting the two together, it’s a very powerful combination.

Q: What role do you

see for predictive analytics, and what has been achieved in this area so far?

A: Being able to make better predictions based on the data is

NS2 Serves Launched for Veterans The SAP NS2 Solutions Summit also provided an opportunity for the company to highlight its ongoing commitment to veterans’ causes, starting with the launch of a new nonprofit organization that will offer training and employment assistance to military service veterans.

NS2 Serves will offer training courses in SAP solutions geared for national security applications, leading to certifications that will be valuable in many career paths in the U.S. and worldwide.

Over a three-month period, full-time, paid trainees will undergo training in business process integration; military supply chain management; presentation and communication skills; preparation of a case study to solve a customer problem; weekly discussions with a business mentor; “soft skills” training and support; and access to an exclusive job fair with potential employers.

Trainees will receive a monthly stipend, mid-term bonuses for completion of requirements, and, upon

the “Holy Grail” in the intelligence community today. Because if all we do is collect and analyze data on what has already happened, then all we’ve done is write a good history book.

An important part of the SAP HANA investment is developing algorithms that look at data from various places and detect patterns that may point to some troubling trend. For example, we might combine sentiment

Left to right: Steve Kupcha, Ashley Booker, Mitchell Grimes, Mark Testoni, Billy Hurley

graduation, placement assislongtime activist for veterans, tance to work in the national representing the Military security space. Training will Warrior Support Foundation kick off in Bethesda, Md., on (MWSF). In partnership with March 3, 2014, Bank of America, Billy Hurley III and continue MWSF under its @BillyHurley3 through the end “Homes4Wound@SAPNS2: of May. InteredHeroes” @BillyHurley3 and ested parties program awarded @BirdiesForBrave now may visit www. a four-bedroom, announcing funds for vets n conjunction sapns2.com/vetthree-bathroom with @PGATOUR erans to get more home near Char#SAPNS2Summit // information and lottesville, Va., to Awesome 2 b involved submit a resume. wounded veteran 29 October In another Mitchell Grimes, show of commitspecialist, E-4, ment to veterans, U.S. Army retired.

SAP NS2 shared its stage with Specialist Grimes served as Billy Hurley, a Navy veteran an infantryman from October and PGA TOUR golf profes2009 to March 2013 and was sional, representing Birdies for wounded by an enemy rocket the Brave, and Steve Kupcha, a near Kirkuk, Iraq, in 2011. ■

A: As I often tell my staff, we are trying to look not at where the hockey puck is now, but where it will be in two or three passes.

I want to see our company continue to grow, but more importantly I’d like to think that our customers will say that we have done some important things for them and have helped enhance national security, and we couldn’t have done those without the help of NS2. ■

analysis on Twitter with captured signals and information from blogs to detect an emerging threat. That is predictive analytics, and SAP technologies are an important part of that discussion.

Q: What do you see for

the future? Where are your industry and your company headed?

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IN U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY,

NEW CHALLENGES REQUIRE NEW SOLUTIONS SAP NS2TM CAN HELP YOU RUN FASTER, SMARTER, LEANER IN THE MOST SECURE ENVIRONMENTS. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss how SAP NS2 can help you achieve your mission.

For more information, please visit www.SAPNS2.com