Abstracts of Magazine FUJITSU 2006-9 (VOL.57, NO.5)

Special Issue: IT Supporting Safety and Security in Society

• Fujitsu's Activities for Safety and Security in Society

In December 2004, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) announced the u-Japan policy with the aim of achieving, by 2010, a ubiquitous network society in which anything and anyone can easily access networks and freely transmit information from anywhere at any time. Although deployment of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure and efficient use thereof have led to a high-convenience society, security has emerged as a significant social issue. Fujitsu has made a great contribution to improving safety and security in a wide range of fields where the ICT plays an important role, for example, disaster response and prevention, public safety, environment protection, support for children and the elderly, medicine, and transportation. In a major move ahead, Fujitsu has integrated the Safety and Security Solutions framework, which supports and enhances customer value. In this paper, we discuss the ICT trends in the ubiquitous network society and then introduce Fujitsu’s activities for a safe and secure society.

• Fujitsu's Business Continuity Plan Development Methodology

In today's high-risk business environment, more and more companies are looking at the Business Continuity Plan (BCP) as a way of enhancing their responsiveness to unexpected situations. However, beyond desktop theories, there are no practical BCP development methodologies suitable for the business environment of Japanese companies. This makes BCP development a very difficult task. Fujitsu has developed a practical methodology and software tool called BCEXPERT based on its experience of BCP development for various business formations within the Fujitsu Group. There are four core processes in Fujitsu's pioneering BCP development methodology: standardization as a Fujitsu Business Continuity Management Model, structuring of business processes and their required resources, extraction of mandatory resources for business continuity, and analysis of the business impact of assumed resource damage under various risk scenarios. This methodology can be applied not only for BCP development but also for business resource optimization. This paper introduces this methodology.

• Information Sharing in Local Society and Continuity of Government Operations

To minimize the impact of a disaster, it is important for the members of the affected local communities to help and support each other. However, there is a limit to what can be done when a disaster strikes, so it is necessary to analyze the workflows of everyday work that secures the continuity of organizations and strengthen them wherever weaknesses are found. This paper introduces some activities in Japan for improving the information sharing structure so that damage from a disaster is minimized; an activity for Incident Command System (ICS), which is a standard for incident response procedures, command chains, terminology, and other details and is used by the U.S. government; and a general activity for Continuity of Operation (COOP), which is a business continuity applied in administrative organizations. This paper also introduces an overall incident response solution called Incident Command Solution and Decision Making Support of Response Prioritization by Process Resource Model. This solution is one of Fujitsu’s core incident response functions.

• Disaster Response Solution for Local Governments

New national protection laws have been enacted to address anxieties about international terrorism, foreign military power, and natural disasters, which have been prevalent in the news in recent years. Also, a new government crisis-management system has been constructed that enables cooperation on national, administrative division, city, town, and village levels. Furthermore, the growing concern that people have regarding the safety of society is drawing much attention in local governments. In response, local authorities have been reviewing their risk management plans for protecting the populace against the direct and indirect dangers of military attacks on Japan. This paper analyzes the operation of disaster prevention systems and crisis management by local governments. It also introduces Fujitsu's Disaster Response Solution, which is designed to be integrated into the existing disaster prevention information system but also keep up with the latest developments in the national protection laws.

• Fujitsu's Experiment in Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Free Mobility Project

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport is concerned about the rapidly declining birthrate, graying population, and other changes that are occurring in Japanese society. To respond to these changes, the ministry is using ubiquitous technology and is advancing the Free Mobility Project, which is an advanced project for constructing a universal social infrastructure. Fujitsu has been participating in this project from its beginning as a supporting enterprise and has conducted a proof of concept experiment from the standpoint of users using Fujitsu's state-of-the-art ubiquitous technology in October 2005 in Kobe City. This paper discusses the effectiveness of this project and the useful technology obtained from the project and the proof of concept experiment. It also discusses the problems that were encountered during the experiment and future developments of the project.

• Security, Quality, Compliance and Comfort for Field of Healthcare

Healthcare Solutions Unit of FUJITSU LIMITED is the organization that develops and delivers horizontal/comprehensive IT-related solutions/services towards healthcare areas e.g. medical institutions, nursing care, pharmaceutical industry, central laboratories, drug wholesaling and bioinformatics. In this article, we would like to mention what we deliver to the respective healthcare professionals and patients through our solutions and services utilizing our technologies, experiences, know-how's and resources.

• Environmental Solutions for Sustainable Economy and Society

It is becoming increasingly important to address environmental problems such as global warming, waste disposal, resource depletion and recycling, and the management of hazardous substances. Enterprises need to take the initiative in reducing the considerable amount of strain we are placing on our global environment. Also, they should regard this need as an opportunity to sustain their business conditions and enhance their competitiveness. People, care about environmental friendliness regarding their homes, workplace, local environment, and especially the products they buy. Scientific knowledge about the environment is advancing day by day, and companies and administrative organizations must properly manage environmental information and make it readily available so they are accountable for their activities and win people's trust and respect. This paper summarizes the Fujitsu Group's environmental solutions for enterprises and local governments.

• Emergency Contact and Safety Confirmation Service

When disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and typhoons occur, employees and other staff must be quickly contacted to confirm whether they are safe. However, the existing telephone tree system has several problems. For example, it takes a lot of time and effort to establish a communication. Also, the difficulty in learning the overall situation makes it harder to develop an action plan and delays recovery efforts. These problems can significantly disrupt business continuity. E-mail transmissions via cell-phones have been less subject to congestion and communication restrictions during recent disasters. Fujitsu has therefore developed a cell-phone-based Emergency Contact and Safety Confirmation Service for quickly confirming whether employees and other staff are safe. The service, which has been provided since March 2004 and improved several times, receives favorable customer appraisals. This paper introduces the latest version of the emergency contact and safety confirmation service and describes the efforts behind its development.

• Information Security Solutions

In accordance with intensified efforts for enactment of J-SOX, companies are expected to promote various approaches for information security governance. In establishing the governance, companies have been asked to develop management systems and regularly explain their information security measures to stakeholders, for example, customers, investors, and business partners. The Japanese government advocates an information security report model to help companies promote efforts toward security measures. Against this background, Fujitsu has provided the Enterprise Security Architecture (ESA) concept for supporting effective and efficient corporate investment in information security. Fujitsu also separately provides the security solutions that are incorporated into the foundations of its products and services. This paper describes the government's information security report model and Fujitsu's ESA and ESA-based security solutions.

• Storage-LCM Service for Safe and Secure IT Systems Operations

Fujitsu's Storage Life Cycle Management Service (Storage-LCM Service) ensures safe and secure operation of IT systems. In this service, expert engineers take charge of the entire life-cycle of storage infrastructures so that high-reliability and high-availability systems operations are realized. We also provide solution services for ensuring information security and business continuity, which have recently become important requirements. This paper introduces our activities in Storage-LCM Services and describes four representative solution services that it provides: office document operation/management, email management, real-time remote data storage, and business availability enhancement. This paper also describes the development background and characteristics of these solution services and some examples of their application.

• RFID Tag Products and Their Application for Safety Improvement

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology can significantly improve safety and security in a wide range of applications. For example, it can be used to identify electronic media or notebook PCs that contain sensitive information and manage their storage, lending, and return; trace food to its production lot and provide consumer information about food; and restrict and log the entering and leaving of people into and from a room. RFID is also attracting attention as a technology for identifying people over distances of more than 20 meters. Fujitsu's RFID products include 13.56 MHz RFID, UHF-band RFID, and active tags. This paper describes these products and gives some examples of their application.

• Image Recognition Wide-Area Surveillance Technology for Safety and Security in Society

Surveillance is needed to build a safe and secure society. To meet this need, we developed a small-object detection technology for 24/7 wide-area outdoor surveillance based on an image recognition technology that is functionally similar to human vision. It can detect people and other small objects that are represented by as little as 5 pixels in an area of up to 75 m × 75 m and reports their locations. This technology, called frequency-pattern emphasis subtraction (FPES), detects a small object by analyzing the differences between the spatial frequencies of the background and the object. Because FPES emphasizes the spatial frequency component of objects, the detection precision is unaffected by changes in the weather. In experiments, this technology detected 95% or more of the objects in various areas of 30 m × 30 m to 75 m × 75 m. This paper describes FPES and some of the problems of using automatic surveillance and their solutions.

• ITS Sensor for Railroad Crossing Safety

Japan's Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) project for safe and comfortable transportation is steadily progressing. To improve safety, the Information Technology (IT) should be applied to most of Japan's traffic environments. In response, the Fujitsu Group has installed IT equipment into motor vehicles in line with a government policy of using IT to bring transportation systems fully in to the 21^st century. The Group has also developed a millimeter-wave radio ITS sensor that can drastically reduce accidents on railroad crossings. The sensor detects objects such as a people, cars, bicycles, and wheelchairs over a wide area of a crossing. This paper outlines the features of the new sensor and the associated IT system, the development of the sensor, and some applications of this technology.

• IT Infrastructure for Safe and Secure Customer Business

The business environment surrounding our customers is changing more rapidly than anticipated. To cope with these changes and expand business, information technology (IT) inevitably must be integrated with corporate management. Meanwhile, problems that might occur in the IT infrastructure at the foundation of business processes and applications could have a significant impact on business, and customers are requesting that it be safe and secure. In response, Fujitsu provides an enhanced IT infrastructure, TRIOLE, that focuses on business agility, efficiency, and continuity. This paper outlines the architecture of TRIOLE and describes its development goals from the perspective of modeling and technology. It also describes TRIOLE System Organizer, which is an internal system that comprehensively supports TRIOLE-based solutions for disaster recovery, improvement of IT system interoperability, and system consolidation.

• Network's Roles in Security Enhancement

Modern society now heavily depends on the Internet-based infrastructure. Along with dramatic improvements in the level of convenience, this infrastructure also brings the risk of serious disruptions to society. We must therefore ensure that this infrastructure is secure and optimally operate and maintain it. This paper describes how network technologies enhance security and help protect our society from various threats. Specifically, it outlines measures and technologies that can be applied to the network infrastructure to increase the reliability and quality of services and protect enterprises and individuals from network threats. This paper also introduces some Fujitsu products and services that apply these measures and technologies so that customers' information assets and infrastructures are protected.