Ian important meeting or conference. Even though you have the date-time group of the message that passed your security clearance, the personnel at the entry-control area or special secu-rity office have to jump through hoops to verify your clearance. By now, you have missed a good portion of the meeting you traveled so far to attend. Members of the 496th Intelligence Group's directorate of security and communications management are working to eliminate security clear-ance hassles by streamlining the pro-cessing and dissemination of person-nel security data for all Air Force personnel worldwide. The program, called SENTINEL KEY, is an automation initiative pro-viding "real-time" security clearance and access information, automated se-curity education and awareness train-ing and clearance adjudication to Air Force major commands, field operat-ing agencies and direct reporting units. The goal of SENTINEL KEY is to eliminate dependence on telephonic, facsimile or postal methods for trans-mittal of collateral security clearances and access information by creating a distributed database containing the clearance status and access granted to all Air Force personnel. SENTINEL KEY will encompass three distinct portions of the person-
nel security world: clearance and ac-cess verification, security awareness training and security clearance adju-dication.
n CLEARANCE AND ACCESS VERIFICATION
The SENTINEL KEY database will be accessible to Special Security
Offices, security forces, information security program managers and other authorized individuals to verify the clearance status of personnel on TDY or permanent reassignment. A World Wide Web browser will be used in conjunction with security software to provide instant and se-cure access to the SENTINEL KEY database. Prototype testing for SENTINEL KEY began in May with units access-ing test data via the World Wide Web. With the recent implementation of an automated security architecture, users will soon be able to retrieve clearance and access data on Air Force personnel. This capability is predicted upon the electronic delivery of investiga-tion information from the Defense In-vestigative Service to the 497th IG/ INS, Air Force Central Adjudication Facility.
n SECURITY AWARENESS TRAINING
Using World Wide Web technol-ogy, SENTINEL KEY will provide
continuous security awareness train-
ing to all personnel with access to a web browser. Although it is anticipated that most of the information presented via the SENTINEL KEY website will be unclassified, the database will be hosted on three worldwide networks in order to reach the greatest level of dissemination possible: --NIPRNET (unclassified) --SIPRNET (classified) --JWICS (SCI) The training material will include detailed security policy and proce-dure guidance, topics of special inter-est (refresher training for cleared per-sonnel, etc.) "real-time" alerts of se-curity risks and notices of changes in security practices. In addition, the website will be used as the dissemination platform for courseware module developed for computer-based training. Individual users will soon be able to download new training modules to their per-sonal workstations or to a file server on their local area network. n SECURITY CLEARANCE ADJUDICATION
SENTINEL KEY is just the begin-ning of a larger plan to automate
personnel security functions. As the prototype for the Depart-ment of Defense Joint Personnel Ad-judication System, SENTINEL KEY will set the standard for continued improvements in the personnel secu-rity world. 1