Set up "like a bank"
Capitalizing on the digital revolution, the Laboratory recently opened a prototype Super Vault Type Room (S-VTR) following certification of the facility for classified operations by the National Nuclear Security Administration. It's the first such security facility in the NNSA complex.
The S-VTR turns the dynamic challenges of information technology into a solution for security. "By utilizing tens of miles of encrypted digital fiber optics at the Laboratory, we can remove distance as an element of convenience and greatly consolidate our management of cyber information," said Roger Hagengruber, the Laboratory's chief security officer.
"The S-VTR represents a new era in how this Laboratory uses, handles, and protects electronic classified information," said Laboratory Director Michael Anastasio. "It's a higher level of accountability and accessibility that in many ways mimics the way a bank handles assets, both physically and electronically. Ease of appropriate access is coupled with aggressive security in a way that should enable both great science and great security."
Demonstrating the close partnership of cyber security and physical security at the Laboratory, the S-VTR employs the latest in technology but also uses a tried-and-true physical system for delivery of some classified items: a Diebold bank teller's window. Researchers are now able to pick up and drop off A-CREM without the S-VTR staff having to open the vault door - a simple but major step in improved security.
And instead of pickup and delivery, employees also have the option, depending on their circumstances, of having the professional security staff of the facility make their A-CREM available on secure servers connected to the Laboratory's classified computing network.
"A key component of our plan to reduce the inherent risks of using classified electronic media is a combination of reducing the overall number of items and consolidating them into as few areas as possible," said Paul Sowa, associate director for safeguards and security (ADSS). "The Super VTR can be a model for how A-CREM is best protected in the future, not only at Los Alamos but elsewhere."
The Laboratory has reduced the overall number of A-CREM items by more than 95 percent, from a high of about 80,000 active items in 2003 to about 4,000 items today. The number of people with direct access to A-CREM also is down by more than 90 percent, and those people are now all professional custodians with more training and accountability than ever. The Laboratory also can close eight other vaults or vault-type-rooms with the opening of the S-VTR.
The goal is to create world-class classified operations at the Laboratory, reducing by orders of magnitude the potential for people to make mistakes.
"We are now using our classified, or 'red' network, much more to our advantage," said Alex Kent of the Advanced Computing Solutions (ACS) program. "By limiting employees' physical contact with A-CREM and converting data to electronic files, we eliminate the risk of losing track of those items, or information, because they never leave the vault."
"Thanks to Mike Anastasio's initiative, the S-VTR went from an idea to reality in a matter of months," said Hagengruber. "This enables major improvements in cyber and physical security. The effort has proven to be so promising that it was integrated into the DOE secretary's compliance order as a requirement for the Laboratory."
