Q3 2007 IN THIS ISSUE FEATURE DHS Selects NC4 Readiness '08 User Conference SITUATIONAL AWARENESS SPOTLIGHT CyberCop E TEAM PRODUCT STEERING COMMITTEE (PSC) UPDATE by Lou Vargo, PSC Chairman PRODUCT NEWS ESA 5.0 E Team R6.2, R3.0 and Analysis and Reporting Engine Standard NC4 Support Process Enhancements READER CONTRIBUTIONS Do you have an interesting tip on how to best use ESA, ESP or E Team? What about input on an aspect of emergency or security management? We welcome contributions to the Readiness Quarterly, so please contact us at info@nc4.us if you have a story idea. FEEDBACK Is there something else you'd like to see in this newsletter? Contact us at info@nc4.us. EXECUTIVE CORNER NC4 President, Jim Montagnino   NC4 is proud to have been awarded the contract from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to enhance the Office of Intelligence & Analysis (I&A) information sharing capabilities. NC4 will provide the Extranet Secure Portal (ESP) service as the platform for the DHS Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) Intelligence Portal via its secure application service provider model. The migration to the ESP platform will enable DHS I&A to rapidly deploy a proven operational capability to meet mission-critical objectives. Read the full press release   MARK YOUR CALENDAR E Team Customer Call Thursday, December 13 11am PDT / 2pm EDT 4th ANNUAL NC4 READINESS '08 USERS CONFERENCE April 21-23 Hilton Head, SC The Westin Resort   SITUATIONAL AWARENESS SPOTLIGHT NC4's CyberCop portal provides individuals an ultra-secure web-based environment to promote and facilitate situational awareness. CyberCop enables the sharing of sensitive information among a cohesive network of law enforcement, first responders, homeland defense and law enforcement related professionals from all levels of government regardless of department affiliation and jurisdictional boundaries. CyberCop is committed to providing a safe and secure environment where ideas can be freely exchanged to aid individual efforts and to foster cooperative efforts in the fight against crime, terrorism and the security of our homeland. NC4's CyberCop portal is being enhanced to soon include a global map with live ESA incidents shown as icons on the map. This animated map will show all active ESA incidents as it slowly zooms and pans across the globe. Clicking on the map launches ESA Virtual Earth map and will provide the incident description information for all of the incidents with media sources. For additional information, please contact info@nc4.us	FEATURE Department of Homeland Security Selects NC4 to Deliver Secure 360 Degree Intelligence Exchange   Web-Based Extranet Portal Allows for Secure Communication and Collaboration EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – October 22, 2007 – The National Center for Crisis and Continuity Coordination (NC4), a leader in situational awareness, incident monitoring, crisis management, and secure collaboration, today announced it was awarded a contract from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to enhance the Office of Intelligence & Analysis (I&A) information sharing capabilities. NC4 will provide the Extranet Secure Portal (ESP) service as the platform for the DHS Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) Intelligence Portal via its secure application service provider model. The migration to the ESP platform will enable DHS I&A to rapidly deploy a proven operational capability to meet mission-critical objectives. NC4 was selected because the extranet secure portal service delivers existing functionality and security that meets DHS I&A priority requirements for handling the dissemination and collaboration of intelligence information at the Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) level. The NC4 solution enables DHS to deploy this capability within days rather than months or years. The NC4 portal will provide DHS I&A with a trusted secure platform for the rapid dissemination of intelligence data at the CUI level to 10,000 users including representatives from the DHS Intelligence Enterprise as well as a nationwide community of State, Local, Tribal, and Private Sector (SLTP) customers, and Federal and International partners. The portal will also be utilized to support State Fusion Centers by providing a secure environment as well as a suite of core tools for collaboration at the CUI level amongst intelligence analysts nationwide. “Due to the nature of its operations, DHS I&A interacts with State, Local, and Tribal resources as well as other Federal Agencies and the Private sector,” said Bill Donaldson, Director of Government Programs, NC4. “As all of these organizations operate on disparate networks, DHS I&A required an extranet portal that could be configured to support a ‘responsibility to provide’ information model as well as provide for secure compartmented collaboration. The NC4 secure portal service will provide the situational readiness platform that will enable DHS I&A to enhance the secure rapid dissemination of CUI data as well as provide a secure environment for collaboration with Federal, State, Local, and Tribal intelligence resources.” Under the terms of the one-year contract with two option years, NC4 will deliver, host, and manage the infrastructure and security for the I&A secure portal. NC4 will establish the information sharing portal structure to support and maintain bi-directional communication among intelligence professional entities. The contract is valued at a potential $6.1 million over the three-year period.   Mark Your Calendar for 4th Annual User's Conference – Readiness '08   We are pleased to announce our Fourth Annual User’s Conference, being held April 21-23 on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Our User’s Conference offers valuable information on how to make the most of NC4, and provides opportunities to meet with the NC4 Executive team and exchange ideas with other NC4 customers and experts.   The Readiness program will include: Industry speakers New release functionality overview User presentations Product feedback opportunities Opportunity to meet one-on-one with NC4 Executives Networking events And much more... REGISTRATION Online registration will open in January, at which time we will send customers information on how to register. Registration fees are waived again this year for all current customers. LOCATION The Westin Resort, Hilton Head Island Two Grasslawn Avenue Hilton Head Island, SC 29928 843-681-4000 We have negotiated a special rate at the The Westin Resort, Hilton Head Island of $189.00 per night, based on single/double occupancy, plus tax and a $12 resort fee per room, per night. Our room block includes limited rooms at the prevailing government per diem rate. All room requests are honored on a space-available basis. This rate is valid through March 31, 2008. Please mention that you are with the NC4 User Conference when making your reservations. Participants are responsible for booking and paying for their own rooms. Conference questions may be directed to info@nc4.us. We look forward to seeing you in April!
		E TEAM PRODUCT STEERING COMMITTEE UPDATE by Lou Vargo, PSC Chairman The PSC met recently to discuss several product enhancements that are in development. The newest release of the software will include several suggestions that originated from our PSC members. Additionally, the PSC continues to have a voice in prioritizing the recommended changes in future product upgrades. The ability to provide input to this process enables us to identify those enhancements that would yield the most benefit to the entire user community. I again encourage each of you to submit any ideas that you have to a member of the PSC, who are listed here for your reference. Jaclyn Barcroft, Michigan Department of State Police, barcroftj@michigan.gov Coleen Bell, Oakland Fire Department Office of Emergency Services, cabell@oaklandnet.com Joe Casey, Federal Communications Commission, joseph.casey@fcc.gov Preston Cook, Orange County OEM, preston.cook@co.orange.fl.us Jacob Cooper, NYC Office of Emergency Management, jcooper@OEM.NYC.GOV John Dosh, Escambia County, john_dosh@co.escambia.fl.us Diane Fernandez, Arizona State Division of Emergency Management, diane.fernandez@azdema.gov David Finch, State of Missouri, david.finch@dps.mo.gov Anthony Kopf-Johnson, Public Health Agency of Canada, anthony_kopfjohnson@phac-aspc.gc.ca Shirley K. Ono, Macy's, sono@fds.com Lou Vargo, Ohio County, WV, Emergency management Agency, lvargo@wocema.com Many E Team users have ideas that would benefit their organization in using the product. These same ideas may also benefit other E Team users. The committee is committed to addressing each idea from the user community and prioritizing all of the ideas that will then get submitted to the developers for integration into their timeline. I would also like to encourage users to share Lessons Learned from incidents, declared disasters, and non-emergency events, which are helpful to our entire user community. The State of Michigan recently hosted the Governors’ Conference and used E Team throughout the event. The PSC not only wants to look at ways to enhance the product but also wants to share information of how E Team is being used. Another one of our members, Anthony Kopf-Johnson has been instrumental in establishing the Canadian Users’ Group. In addition to the well established Florida Users’ Group, there are user groups being considered in Arizona, Michigan and West Virginia. The members of the PSC would be glad to assist any one or any group or state that would like to start a Users’ Group. This is an ideal method of sharing similar ideas with other users in a local area or region. The entire PSC looks forward to meeting many users at the Users Conference in March 2008. Hilton Head Island will serve as the ideal place to come together and share our experiences with E Team.
		ESA PRODUCT NEWS Beginning in 2008, ESA customers will have access to a set of reports providing detailed and summary information about relevant incidents based on their facility and regional alert profiles. Several reports will be available for pre-defined periods (monthly, quarterly, yearly) that will provide incident information useful to both security and continuity organizations in evaluating which facilities are most vulnerable to external incidents. The reports will also be useful for budgeting and planning purposes. The ESA Reports will be generated using the industry standard Crystal Reports software and available to customers in the universal Adobe Acrobat PDF format that can be viewed on-line or printed. The reports will include graphs and charts to summarize information by severity and category and also provide incident information specific to each facility including the average proximity of the incidents by severity. A detailed incident report is also included that provides a comprehensive set of incident alerts received by the customer during the period. This detailed incident report will be available both in fully searchable PDF format and in a KML version that can be launched using Google Earth for a global, geographic view. For additional information on ESA Version 5.0, please contact info@nc4.us or call 877.624.4999.
		E TEAM PRODUCT NEWS E Team Release 6.3 is now available under NC4's early support program to select customers. R6.3 will include the following enhancements: Increased Performance – R6.3 has undergone in depth performance testing. Using the best performance testing application available on the market today, tests were run for up to 48 hours, with over 200,000 entries and simulating up to 200 concurrent users. As a result of our testing, we fine tuned the installation process, using more efficient settings for the application and database servers, increasing overall speed, reliability and performance. While performance always depends on a variety of factors including the size of the hardware and network bandwidth availability, this comprehensive tuning exercise provided significant performance improvements to E Team. E Team-to-E Team ACL support – R6.3 provides the ability to share documents with greater security. The E Team-to-E Team ACL support allows customers to share data with defined security groups between E Team systems. This capability enables organizations to ensure that only their counterparts on other systems will be able to access the shared information. ArcIMS 9.2 support – R6.3 supports ESRI's ArcIMS 9.2*, providing E Team with enhanced mapping performance and improved security. E Team continues to utilize and take advantage of the latest releases of ESRI's ArcIMS, making it easier for customers to optimize dynamic mapping during times of crisis. * All future releases of the E Team product will support ArcIMS 9.2 Geocoder support - R6.3 will utilize the ArcIMS 9.2 geocoder, allowing E Team to retire its legacy geocoder and provide geocoding services through the ArcIMS application. This will enable customers to easily take advantage of local data sets for more accurate geocoding. E Team Release 3.0 on Domino was provided to select customers during the extended Beta program. Release 3.0 is intended for customers who plan to remain on the Domino platform for the foreseeable future. The Beta program has been very successful, thanks to the clients that participated. Selected customers will be installing R3 in production beginning in the 4th quarter. Analysis and Reporting Engine Standard - The ARE Standard Package reporting tool has been developed to service the needs of a small to medium emergency operations center. Through integrating collective sets of data from E Team reports, the engine extracts the data and synthesizes the information in a meaningful display to facilitate quick decision making in an on-demand dynamic situational awareness environment. ARE standard is available for E Team releases R2.4 and higher as well as R6.0 and higher, and can be downloaded from our support site at https://support.nc4.us. For questions pertaining to these new releases or to participate in our Beta program, please contact support@nc4.us
		NC4 SUPPORT PROCESS ENHANCEMENTS We have made enhancements to our support process and now offer three ways to submit support requests: Email: support@nc4.us Call: 1-800-209-2312 Support Website: login to the NC4 Support Website at https://support.nc4.us and click on the “InfoTrak” folder on the left hand side of the page. The InfoTrak system is a new feature to the NC4 Support Website. The Support Website is an online resource for NC4 customers, which provides easy access to Best Practices, Product Documentation and Release Notes, Product Downloads, NC4 News and Announcements. The addition of InfoTrak allows users to submit help requests, or Support Requests (SRs) to the NC4 Support Center. The tool will enable users to track the support response and view all previously submitted Support Requests. Users only see Support Requests that have been entered for their organization. The Primary Points of Contact for all NC4 customers are allowed access to the Support Site. To obtain access, please email the NC4 Support Center. The Support Center will provide you with your Customer Support Account Number which will enable you to register to the Website.
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