A Change of Guard

សូមស្តាប់វិទ្យុសង្គ្រោះជាតិ Please read more Khmer news and listen to CNRP Radio at National Rescue Party. សូមស្តាប់វីទ្យុខ្មែរប៉ុស្តិ៍/Khmer Post Radio.
Follow Khmerization on Facebook/តាមដានខ្មែរូបនីយកម្មតាម Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/khmerization.khmerican

Thursday 31 May 2012

Military integrates with Microsoft Lync

Thursday, 31 May 2012 
By Stuart Alan Becker
Phnom Penh Post
120531_08

General Manager Sampath Perera of Techenture Consulting speaks to the Post about Microsoft Lync software yesterday in Phnom Penh. Photograph: Vireak Mai/Phnom Penh Post

The Cambodian Ministry of Defence has begun using Microsoft Lync, an instant messaging client that uses IP protocols, like those used by the internet, to integrate communications from radios to smart phones, enabling secure communications between commanders and troops via many different kinds of mobile devices.

General Manager Sampath Perera of Techenture Consulting, said his firm is proud to be helping the Ministry of Defence integrate their communications with security and speed.

“Basically if you take traditional military communication, you have radio, which is limited to a certain area.  The general can be in another country, but with Microsoft Lync he can use his smart phone to talk with radio channels even on the battlefield,” Perera said.

The system runs with Microsoft Lync Server software on computer hardware owned by the client and has built-in high-level encryption, Perera said.


“The advantages are that you don’t really need to throw away the existing systems.  When you integrate the radio systems with Lync, communications are available anywhere in the world.”

Sri Lankan Perera, 28, has been in Cambodia for about four years. He says many other organizations including banks with multiple branches, mobile operators, government agencies and NGOs could benefit from such secure unified communications capability.

“The benefit for a customer with Microsoft Lync is that you can replace the traditional communications system. You can integrate a standard PBX telephone system, Yahoo Messenger, Skype and different applications. When they want to do a phone call they pick up the phone and use Skype.  You can integrate all these things because Microsoft now owns Skype,” Perera said.

“The main benefit for business is they don’t need to invest in different devices for different channels of communications.  They need land phones, fax machines, separate emails, chat and instant messaging.  With link you integrate all devices, it saves costs and money on IP administration,” he said.

Giving the example of the Lync system capability using The Phnom Penh Post, Perera said, “If the operator at The Post rings your extension, it will ring your mobile phone. No matter where you are, we get your call to you. If you are a large organisation with many branch offices and a need to call from branch to branch, it costs money.  By using Lync, you can deploy IP communications.”

The cost of the system depends on the number of users, Perera says.

“If you have 30 to 50 users with standard Lync, then we are looking at somewhere like $5,000 for the deployment and that’s just for the software.  With the hardware it would total from $6,000 to $7,000.  The cost is based on the number of client access licenses,” he said.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmmmm... what prevent the hackers from launching DoS attacks on the radios in the field? Can the said encryption be trusted? I think high level security encryption is subject to export restriction by the US government, meaning the US government only allows the industry to export the encryption which it can already break.

Anonymous said...

Having some level of encryption is far better than having non at all.
There is no such things as hack-proof encryption, only a matter of time before it is breakable, even the Pentagon's state of the art firewall are breakable by hackers.

Anonymous said...

I hope this guy is not already working for our enemies but it is a good start. We should still have some old fashion communication between our forces stand by UN case our more richer enemies attack out network.

Anonymous said...

True that there is no such things as hack-proof encryption, but what is the point of having an encryption already known to be broken? Why go though the trouble to encrypt a message that you know it can be decrypted by unintended receipients?

Any encryption, no matter how sophisticated it is, can eventually be cracked. The idea is that by the time hackers find a way to break it, we already move to a different encryption algorithm and stay a head of the game.

Anonymous said...

1 June 2012 12:55 PM

Your point is taken!
However, unless we have our very own experts to develope the encryption from scratch, then we must rely on foreign entity and/or governments to supply those technologies. As long as this is the case, we will always be vulnerable.

Having said that, it is how we analyse the strengths and weaknesses and make customisations to suit our operational needs that counts.
It is no different to buying military hardwares from foreign countries, by knowing their trengths and weaknesses we can make appropriete adjustments to suit our needs and also provides us added security.

Like another commentor states "it is a good start".