SAN MATEO, Calif. – July 09, 2015 – AtHoc, Inc., today announced the launch and immediate availability of AtHoc Connect, designed to facilitate communication and collaboration within and across organizations during a crisis.
The company created AtHoc Connect to allow organizations to build and participate in secure networks that effectively bring together people, organizations and devices to improve interagency communication and collaboration during crises and critical business situations. Such information sharing includes cross-agency exchange of messaging, multi-media content and geographical information, resulting in improved shared situational awareness and rapid coordinated response.
The requirement for organizations to communicate and collaborate with other organizations during a crisis situation is well documented. From Hurricane Katrina, the LAX shooting and the Washington Navy Yard shooting, major incidents have shown that emergencies do not occur in silos and that interoperable communication between agencies is essential for rapid event resolution.
Congress has recently acted as well. With the signing of H.R.615: Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Interoperable Communications Act on July 6, 2015, DHS is now mandated to “…achieve and maintain interoperable communications among the components of DHS, including for daily operations, planned events, and emergencies.” Congress recognizes that despite effective communication within specific Homeland Security agencies, interagency communication still remains a challenge, and the new law calls for explicit solutions to address this.
Recent trends in technology and innovation in networked-based communication models, including the maturity of social networks as well as the evolution of the Internet-of-Things, make solving this long time challenge viable. It is now possible to achieve interoperable communication with relative ease and modest investment.
AtHoc, already serving the vast majority of the U.S. Federal government with its alerting platform, tackles the challenge of interagency communication with the introduction of AtHoc Connect.
How AtHoc Connect Works – Building Cross-Organizational Networks
AtHoc Connect enables organizations to communicate and collaborate with other organizations during a crisis situation. An organization can “invite” others to join its “network”, similar to the way connect invitations occur on social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn. Invitations to “connect” can be sent to any organization, whether they are an existing AtHoc customer or not. All connected members can securely use the AtHoc platform to exchange alerts, share multi-media content, and geographical based information with any other connected member. The result – a secure network of organizations that can communicate and collaborate with each other during a crisis.
AtHoc Connect is available now to all AtHoc customers without additional licensing costs. Customers can also expand their crisis communications network to include organizations that don’t currently use AtHoc for crisis communications.
Every member of the network can establish their own policies for sending and receiving information within and outside of their organization. This flexibility provides a seamless means to rapidly develop a broad-based collaborative, secure, interoperable network.
Furthermore, every member organization controls its own personnel information and is not required to share it with external organizations to achieve such interoperable communication. This approach enables organizations to maintain the security and self-management capability required by many participating agencies as well as prevents the need to update contact information of external contacts.
The result – AtHoc Connect improves situational awareness, reduces response times and provides end-to-end control of emergency communications for all network organizations – resulting in true interoperable communications and collaboration when every second counts.
AtHoc Connect meets the most demanding standards of privacy and security
Such innovative collaboration requires the highest levels of policy control and security. AtHoc exceeds SSAE-16 certification and is one of few vendors providing a hosted crisis communication service certified as compliant with government and Department of Defense security mandates such as NIST SP 800-53 Rev4 at FIPS 199 Moderate classification. Additionally, AtHoc Connect has received Authority-to-Operate (ATO) from the both the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
“Our mission is simply to make the world safer. We are looking forward to seeing the positive impact AtHoc Connect will have on the security of our communities and our country,” said Guy Miasnik, President and CEO. “We are pleased to share our innovation with our customers as well as our nation’s leaders who have recognized the need for interoperable crisis communication.”
About AtHoc
AtHoc is the pioneer and recognized leader in networked crisis communication, protecting millions of people around the world. AtHoc provides a seamless and reliable exchange of critical information among organizations, their people, devices and external entities. A trusted partner to the world’s most demanding customers, AtHoc is the #1 provider to the US Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, and safeguards numerous other government agencies and leading commercial enterprises. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, the company operates around the globe. For more information about AtHoc, please visit www.athoc.com.