Vendors band together for critical infrastructure bids

Five companies have banded together to develop solutions specifically for managing the country’s critical infrastructure.

Dubbed the Strategic Infrastructure Protection Consortium, the group will focus on technologies that can help monitor and protect airports, power plants, ports, military bases and other potential hot spots.

In some cases, they will develop solutions for predicting potential security threats or integrating new sensors with older systems. In other cases, they will focus on smoothing information sharing among agency systems or securing communications across personal digital assistants and other mobile devices.

The group will build these solutions using technologies such as access control, digital mapping, wireless networking, video analytics and real-time data analysis.

When it comes to critical infrastructure protection, “Decades-old security paradigms must be overhauled,” said Bill Adams, president of CT Solutions, one of the participating vendors.

Here are the charter members and their areas of expertise:

• Abeo, wireless networking.
• CT Solutions, software development and trainings services.
• GCS Research, geospatial applications.
• Knowledge Vector, sensor data fusion and analysis.
• Vidient, intelligent video.

The five companies have previously worked on two strategic security solutions for the Transportation Security Administration at three airports. The group's first goal is to push their security solution to other locations, the first of which is the Potomac Basin area, the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and nearby Defense Department locations. Development will begin in October.