A new method to track the borrowing of Accountable Classified Removable Electronic Media (ACREM) is scheduled to begin this week.
The Labwide Accountability System will gather data from a number of current Enterprise Systems, such as badging and the Employee Data System, which, among other functions, tie together information about an employee’s clearance, status and training.
The task of authorizing the borrowing of ACREM traditionally has been paper-based, with each classified library custodian controlling his or her own records. The Labwide Accountability System is completely paperless and standardizes the process for ACREM borrowing.
The Labwide Accountability System will allow up-to-the-minute vouching of a borrower’s credentials asking questions such as: Does the borrower have an active Q? Has the borrower completed the required training to handle ACREM? Is the borrower authorized by his line management to handle ACREM? In addition, the new system will accurately track the status of individual pieces of ACREM and is guaranteed to provide much-improved controls on the inventory and accounting of the material.
“The policy for borrowing ACREM has not changed, but the methodology has,” said Dale Leschnitzer of the Chief Information Office (CIO), LAS project lead. “The bottom line is if the person has no authority, no ACREM. The paper borrower lists will be archived and no longer used.”
For LAS to work, three levels of signature authorities are needed to certify a borrower:
• He or she must be authorized by their line manager;
• He or she must be authorized by the approving official of a Classified Media Library (CML) or ACREM collection; and
• If the specific ACREM has a Sigma level higher than 10, the borrower must be authorized by the official (s) who grants access to Sigma levels higher than 10.
Accountable Classified Removable Electronic Media borrower authorities, effective for one year, will be assigned just like any other authority (e.g., administrative, purchasing, etc.) through the Signature Authority System. Although no training is required to assign borrower authorities, line managers may request briefings about LAS through their senior security advisers or division security officers.
For more information about LAS or to schedule a briefing, contact Lorraine Molina of Deployed Security Services (S-9), classified matter custodian team leader, at lmolina@lanl.gov by electronic mail.
The roll-out of LAS will start with the Information Management (IM) Division library, followed by other classified media libraries in subsequent weeks. All classified media libraries are expected to be online by May 31.
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Success in ACREM reductions since July 2004
“I’m very proud of our employees and what they’ve accomplished in reducing ACREM. We undertook aggressive measures to reduce and control the amount, and in less than two years, we have eliminated more than 42 percent of the accountable CREM, well ahead of the reduction schedule that [the National Nuclear Security Administration] has requested in large part due to the expansion of the red network,” said Don Cobb, acting deputy Laboratory director.
Overall ACREM reduction:
• Reduced ACREM holdings from 23,555 in July 2004 to 13,150 (of which, another 2,683 are scheduled for destruction)
• Established 20 centralized ACREM libraries
• Significantly reduced the number of storage locations across the Lab from 89 buildings with 733 rooms to 22 buildings with 26 rooms
• Access controlled by Security and Safeguards (S) Division, thereby reducing the number of users with direct, unsupervised assess to ACREM
• 4,500 users reduced to 32 custodians
• ACREM is stored in locked containers within vault-type rooms or GSA approved security safes with custodian access only
• Libraries have daily check-in/check-out procedures, daily transactional inventories, and 100 percent weekly inventories
• In process of launching an Enterprise-level Laboratory-wide ACREM accountability system with multiple engineered controls.
Future plans include
• Accelerating plans to move to a diskless classified computing environment to reduce the ACREM security threat
• Expansion of the classified computing red network and the deployment of diskless technologies across the classified workplace
• Keyboard-video-mouse technology will allow Q-cleared employees to perform classified computing at their workstations without having the ability to create ACREM
• Eliminating the vast majority of ACREM from the workplace by destroying or placing in centralized libraries, thus helping eliminate the possibility of undetected creation and/or mishandling of ACREM.
