Matching the threat: how National Security agencies can connect the dots
National security is always a complex topic, but it is only becoming more so. It spans both the digital and the physical world and is impacted by a wide range of factors. The traditional threats of terrorism to the lives and wellbeing of people in the UK are now accompanied by the ever-growing cybersecurity threat that regularly makes the headlines. In fact, the UK Government’s Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy highlights 27 different trends that will impact national security over the next 8 years.
Against this backdrop, what should security organisations goals be? And how might technology help them achieve these goals? I believe they can learn a lot by looking first at how their adversaries operate.
Overlapping priorities
Whilst many threats to national security might seem disconnected on first glance, they are far more related than many might expect. Take the example of drug dealing in rural areas or ‘county lines’ as they’ve come to be known. Whilst this activity may appear to be very local, even for many of those involved in it, it doesn’t take long to draw a line from the drugs being sold, to human trafficking rings, to terrorism and cybercrime.
What appeared to be a localised threat actually connects people across multiple countries and who are often operating with very different motives. Despite these differences, we often see high levels of cooperation and coordination between these different groups as they work together to evade detection and prosecution. Information is shared quickly and widely, helping individuals and organisations to learn from one another. Of course, those involved probably wouldn’t frame it as collaboration, but it enables these national security threats to persist.
Of course, policing these threats also covers multiple parties. The local police officer on the beat picking up intelligence from communities and low-level offenders is helping regional and national organisations to identify and crack down on crime. And these agencies in turn will likely work with colleagues in other countries to tackle international crime.
However, unlike the criminals, information sharing between these agencies can still be difficult at times. This stems from both technical and non-technical challenges. At the technology level, organisations often have very different system architectures and databases, which can make it difficult for them to easily share intelligence data securely. At a non-technical level, organisational policies and data privacy approaches are often not aligned, which can create issues when sharing classified information.
Rightly, security and privacy are chief concerns for national security agencies. However, if organisations were able to share information more easily and quickly then they might be able to match the agility that is often exhibit by the criminals they are trying to catch.
Improving information flows
Of course, the ideal solution to this would probably be completely aligning all systems and policies across organisations, but this unlikely to happen any time soon. Fortunately, there are other ways agencies might be able to improve information sharing without impacting security. One might be to embrace robotic process automation (RPA).
Well implemented RPA could help unlock data sharing at both scale and speed. For example, when it comes to the classification of documents, it could be deployed to automatically remove personally identifiable information from documents, making them more widely available for intelligence purposes. Or, when connecting systems, it could be used to help validate records against one another and find common patterns for further human review, even when data isn’t stored in the same format on each system.
Implemented well, it could help agencies mirror the sort of connections that exist between criminal groups and individuals in a way that is systemic and scalable. Answering a threat that transcends boundaries of all kinds with a solution that enables the secure and ethical flow of data across those boundaries.
Implementing change
Of course, making this a reality will not be simple, but there are some key questions that might help kick-start the process. How might we mirror the structures of criminal organisations within and between national security agencies? What barriers currently exist to the free flow of data and how many of them are actually essential? How do we use technology to enable our teams to work together more effectively and efficiently?
These are just the start, and many more questions are likely to emerge. However, by looking at the threats we hope to counter, this might help national security and local law enforcement leaders identify opportunities for technical and organisational innovation.
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Author:
Maddie Lewis, Accenture
Georgie Morgan
Georgie joined techUK as the Justice and Emergency Services (JES) Programme Manager in March 2020, then becoming Head of Programme in January 2022.