On August 5th and 6th, CIRI staff members Randy Sandone, executive director, and program managers Jennifer Summers and Jamie Frye supported the DHS S&T Exhibit booth at the APCO 2024 Conference in Orlando, Florida.
The CIRI team presented a briefing regarding its many research and technology transition projects related to emergency communications and in particular CIRI’s initiatives focused on public safety answering points (PSAPs). These projects included: the NG911 Interoperability Testing Project which is developing a testing framework and long-term sustainability model to ensure that NG911 components and systems support end-to-end interoperability; the 5G Timing Project which is analyzing the timing signal requirements for 5G infrastructure and identifying viable alternative timing signal sources; and the Land Mobile Radio Timing Project which is doing the same for land mobile radios.
In addition, CIRI staff provided demonstrations of the DHS/CIRI-developed Cyber Secure Dashboard (CSD) cyber risk management software application which has integrated support for the NIST Cybersecurity Framework PSAP Profile. The PSAP Profile had been previously developed at CIRI through DHS S&T’s vision and guidance in support of CISA’s Emergency Communications Division.
Over the course of the conference CIRI staff had numerous conversations at the S&T booth with emergency communications professionals from across the country. These professionals were universally impressed with the Dashboard application and the many CIRI projects supporting the emergency communications domain. Many expressed specific interest in participating in the pilot cybersecurity assessment program currently underway with PSAPs if funding were to be made available.
CIRI was pleased to support S&T’s presence at this conference and we appreciated the opportunity to participate as a partner to DHS. Our participation in the conference was definitely worthwhile.