SHARE – Secure Homeland Access and Reporting Environment

PUSH – Portal to Uphold a Secure Homeland

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The Secure Homeland Access and Reporting Environment (SHARE) is a web portal developed with support of the US Department of Homeland Security (USDHS). Developed as part of their Information Technology Evaluation Program (ITEP), it was one of only 12 proposals funded nationally, and it essentially established the prototype upon which all subsequent Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) systems are based.

Its major goal is to establish the critical missing link between the state’s’ Fusion Center and field officers. Field officers are defined within this context to be all federal, state, local agency and private sector security officers who may be in situations where they might observe terrorist activity. The state’s Fusion Center is a group of analysts that have been established within the Alabama Department of Public Safety who are responsible for awareness and prevention of not only terrorist activities, but also all major related criminal activities. Once major crimes or terrorist activities are in process, the Fusion Center takes on the responsibilities of assisting in response, protection and recovery.

While SHARE is strictly for communications between law enforcement and the state’s Fusion Center, a companion portal, called the Portal to Uphold a Secure Homeland (PUSH), was also developed as part of the USDHS ITEP project to support private sector security personnel who oversee critical infrastructure. Since these two systems were developed as part of the same USDHS-supported project, we will describe them both within this section.

OVERVIEW OF SHARE

To understand how SHARE works it might be best to just go through a typical scenario:

• A law enforcement officer (perhaps acting on a tip from a citizen) encounters suspicious activity on the part of potential perpetrators (at this point there does not need to be any proof of criminal or terrorist activity to set the process in motion).
• The law enforcement officer will bring up the AlaCOP portal, which has a button on it in the Homeland Security section for Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs).
• Clicking the SAR button will take the officer to a reporting mechanism that will call for a simple report to be completed.
• When the SAR is submitted it will go directly to the Fusion Center where it will be entered into the SHARE system.
• The SHARE system will treat the SAR as a new case, giving a supervisor the following capabilities:
• To assign the SAR case to a Fusion Center analyst;
• To adjust the status code of the SAR;
• To close out (archive) the SAR case if there is insufficient grounds for continuing the investigation; all SARs are maintained for potential future reference.
• The Fusion Center analyst assigned the case will have a number of possibilities, including:
• Adding information to the case;
• Making corrections to the SAR;
• Adding displays (pictures, figures or other files) to the case;
• Enlarging the investigation by involving other Fusion Center members and/or law enforcement officers via the SHARE Message Center.
• The SHARE Message Center has a number of unique capabilities:
• It it not e-mail and does not depend on e-mail; the messages reside on only one secure server and data structures are used to determine which members of AlaCOP can view which messages.
• SHARE provides the fusion center personnel a direct access to the message center.
• The message center facilitates the development of groups. There are two types of groups that any member can create:
• Open Group – a group that is announced to all members and any can join – this is good for open investigations where all involved members who have information can contribute to the group.
• Closed Group – this is good for confidential investigations where the group leader wants full control of who is in the group.
• Messages sent to a group go to all members of that group.
• It is quite easy to “Reply To” a group once you receive a message from the group.

The following shows the SHARE Portal home page.

***To view the image click here.***

Note that there are four major tabs:

• Terrorist Report – when a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) is submitted via AlaCOP it will appear under this button, which provides access to the SAR case management system for the Fusion Center.
• Messaging – this provides access to the message center, as described above.
• Portals – this provides access to the large number of portals that have been set up by the federal government and other states that are to some extent comparable and parallel in mission to SHARE.
• Tools – this is a set of search and other tools that have been set up for the Fusion Center personnel.

When a SAR comes in from the field SHARE will detect it and automatically generate a message to those Fusion Center members who are on call. Thus, no time elapses from the submission of the SAR until it is acted upon. The SAR itself goes into a case management system, the main screen of which is given below.

***To view the image click here.***

Notice that the new SAR is in a separate area at the top of the list. It will remain there until it is activated by a supervisor, which will include the assignment of the SAR to a Fusion Center investigator. A log is kept of all SAR case updates, and thus analysts can modify and update the SAR without fear of losing any information. All Fusion Center personnel have access to all SARS. The “Status” and Assigned” fields can only be modified by a Fusion Center supervisor.

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OVERVIEW OF PUSH

The Portal to Uphold a Secure Homeland (PUSH) was developed, as a stem of the USDHS supported ITEP project, to provide private sector security supervisors with the same reporting capability that law enforcement field officers have. This separate web site was outside of the original SHARE design. However, it soon become apparent that private security personnel generally have far more chances of observing suspicious activity than police officers do for two reasons: (1) terrorists generally identify and avoid police officers, and (2) the destructive intent of terrorists often involves critical infrastructure.

Thus, a separate web site was created that is independent of AlaCOP and SHARE. This web portal contains information updated daily that is relevant to private security personnel (e.g., DHS Daily Infrastructure Reports). More importantly, it calls the same Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) module that AlaCOP calls, enabling private security supervisory personnel the same reporting capability that law enforcement field officers have.

When the PUSH URL is invoked, the following web page results:

***To view the image click here.***

PUSH has its own logon separate from SHARE since PUSH needs to be accessed directly by private security supervisors. However, Fusion Cell members can access PUSH directly from SHARE without logging on.

Note that the logon page has functionality without requiring logon. In particular, the following three buttons:

• Why Should I Register? This provides the inquiring private security individual information on PUSH and its benefirts.
• Obtain username & Password
• Forgot Your Password?

The last two are handled by a fairly simple registration screen, which follows.

***To view the image click here.***

All applicants to PUSH are vetted through the FBI. When PUSH is invoked, the following “Warning and Advisory” Screen appears.

***To view the image click here.***

Note that the screen above has two sections: the advisory part, and the warning part, which is static. The advisory part can be modified by the PUSH administrator. In the event that an advisory is ordered by the FBI or USDHS, it will be posted in the space indicated and users will not be able to get on PUSH without seeing it. There is also a PUSH e-mail distribution list that can be used to alert all PUSH members of new critical materials on PUSH.

Clicking on the DOCUMENTS button generates a list of recently posted documents, such as that given below:

***To view the image click here.***

This list is updated daily, and it provides private sector security professionals with current information on terrorism, all crimes, and all hazards. Any of them can be accessed merely by clicking on the title line. Clicking on the red bar at the bottom of the screen leads to the PUSH welcome screen, shown below.

***To view the image click here.***

Notice that the PUSH message center access is via this screen. The PUSH message center functions just as the SHARE/AlaCOP message center with but one exception – the PUSH message center is limited to PUSH members. Generally PUSH members do not have the law enforcement credentials to be able to access much of the information on AlaCOP and in SHARE. Under special circumstances private sector security personnel could be given access to the SHARE/AlaCOP message center to contribute to special investigations.

While providing information to private sector security personnel is an important function of PUSH, its primary function is to provide a mechanism by which they can submit formal terrorist incident reports to the Fusion Center. When either of the “Report a possible incident” buttons is clicked, the same standard SAR form is accessed. The first page of this form is shown below.

***To view the image click here.***

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