A Secure and Distributed Framework to Identify and Share Needed Information

Information analysis and communication play significant roles in decision making, especially in battle grounds and situations where national security is under threat. In many situations when information in consideration is sensitive/confidential, it is in our best interests to analyze and share only needed information to minimize the potential of security breach regarding other irrelevant but sensitive information. Thus, the goal of this paper is to investigate the required methodologies and propose an advanced communication framework that enables different entities in distributed environments to identify, share and analyze only needed information, without disclosing other unwanted but sensitive information. Such a framework will enable the sharing of crucial protected information, which would not have been possible before. For example, to access protected or confidential intelligence information, a person needs to have sufficient clearance level and to justify the need-to-know basis. If the person cannot disclose what he or she knows and without him or her knowing the protected information in the first place, objectively justifying the need-to-know is very difficult. The proposed framework will provide an objective and secure way to justify the need-to-know basis and to identify and share the needed intelligence without disclosing any irrelevant but protected information. In addition, it can also minimize information disclosure in coordinated and collaborative intelligence gathering involving multiple entities.