Security Labeling Assurance and Pedigree (SLAP™)

Information exchange among intelligence agencies, Department of Defense units, and coalition partners is vital for the success of net-centric operations. The proper, efficient management of information and the accuracy and integrity of that information are crucial to mission success. Metadata enables solutions to many problems of data integrity and assessment. As the data becomes more distributed, virtual, and ubiquitous, current methods of centralized metadata and version control are not responsive to mission needs and are not scalable to network centric operations. Further, while established security barriers prevent the disclosure of sensitive information to outsiders, they can also thwart efficient sharing among groups, agencies, and partners.

SLAP is an integrated, Web-service based Security Labeling and Pedigree system that builds on the ATC-NY Metadata Security Assertion Framework and Evaluation System (MetaSAFE). Using web services as the underlying communication mechanism, SLAP will integrate with existing and new web services such as authentication, authorization, and pedigree tagging of new documents. The resulting system demonstrates how metadata can assist decision makers to make decisions about information release and to assess information quality, thus advancing inter-agency data sharing.