ARES Security's CommandBridge solution partners with others to secure Florida seaports

April 19, 2018
The Florida seaports will benefit from the MPS-ISAO’s Cybersecurity Service which advances maritime cyber resilience through the sharing of cyber threat intelligence and coordinated response

The Florida Seaport Transportation and Economic Development Council (FSTED) has chosen ARES Security Corporation’s Common Operating Picture (COP) platform, CommandBridge, to unite the seaports in the state of Florida with state and local government agencies. Historically the state of Florida has sustained multiple natural disasters and has identified gaps in the information sharing process during these events. The FSTED Council has selected CommandBridge to fill these gaps by strengthening the level of maritime domain awareness, cyber resilience, and communications during natural and manmade events. The platform will include an integration with The Maritime and Port Security Information Sharing and Analysis Organization’s (MPS-ISAO) critical cybersecurity alerts. The Florida seaports will benefit from the MPS-ISAO’s Cybersecurity Service which advances maritime cyber resilience through the sharing of cyber threat intelligence and coordinated response. The unified solution will be shared with up to 14 Florida ports as well as 10 other state and regional agencies to streamline communications and operations during regional or state-wide events in order to help responders make quick, informed decisions for improved responses. 

Michael Rubin VP of Governmental Affairs and Project Manager for the Florida Ports Council said, “The FSTED Council is constantly looking for ways to strengthen the public/private partnership between ports and government agencies. CommandBridge and MPS-ISAO will provide Florida ports with the ability to share critical data with each other, first responders and state/local government which has been a vision for FSTED for many years. This ability to quickly collaborate will help the entire state's response efforts during regional or state-wide events and will also increase each ports' resilience”

CommandBridge leverages clients existing systems and sensors to form an intuitive COP that provides heightened situational awareness. Traditionally, these systems, sensors, and workflows would collect and store data individually, which creates silos of information. Instead, CommandBridge assimilates these information sources to provide context and help clients better understand the information they care about. This data is constantly processed by the CommandBridge rules engine, to detect and alert to abnormal activity—whether it’s security or operations related. When CommandBridge detects any of the activity that clients have identified as important, the system fires an alert, visualizes the most relevant information to the user, and then enables users to interact with that data and quickly execute the appropriate response.  

About FSTED
The Florida Seaport Transportation and Economic Development Council is a public entity created by statute and charged with carrying out the state’s economic development mission through implementation of seaport capital improvement projects at the local level. The Council was created within the Department of Transportation and consists of the port directors of the 15 publicly owned seaports and a representative from the Department of Transportation and the Department of Economic Opportunity. The FSTED Council has several committees which discuss and facilitate issues related to the environment, growth management, and seaport security.

About ARES Security Corporation
ARES Security Corporation protects the world’s most critical assets. Our solutions ensure homeland security and business continuity against an entire range of risks that jeopardize people, revenue and operations. Our customers optimize their physical security environments by identifying and quantifying risks and gain situational awareness by integrating information from a variety of sensors into one common operating platform. As the leading enterprise security risk management solutions company, we are able to safeguard the most complex security systems operated by the defense, nuclear, government, energy, utility, and transportation industries around the world. 

About the Maritime and Port Security ISAO
The MPS-ISAO, a non-profit organization, headquartered at the Global Institute for Cyber Security Resilience (GICSR), Global Situational Awareness Center at the NASA/Kennedy Space Center, Florida represents a strategic public- and private-sector collaborative partnership.  Established to advance Maritime and Port cyber resilience, the MPS-ISAO provides a sustainable infrastructure for the Maritime and Port sector to recognize and defend cyberspace by coordinated real-time security situational awareness threat intelligence information sharing and response, adoption of best practice and workforce education.  The MPS-ISAO is a Member of the International Association of Certified ISAOs (IACI).