By Vicky Falcón
NAVAIR Public Affairs

After a long day of meetings, you return to your hotel room ready to crash for the night, but before you can, you want to check your e-mail and take care of some business. You boot up your computer, but are unable to log into the intranet. Your access has been denied.

Separation anxiety is not causing the panic you feel. You have work to do and deadlines to meet and those cannot be accomplished away from your e-mail.

Could this scenario happen to you? Most certainly, says Darryl Allen, AIR-7.41, project manager for information assurance at NAVAIR Patuxent River.

According to Allen, at least 60 percent of the NAVAIR Patuxent River workforce will be equipped with portable seats when the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) computers are rolled out - and every one of those users will need a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) identification certificate to be able to access the firewall at Patuxent River.

"If you're getting a lap-top you will need this certificate," is the simple message touted by Allen and the rest of the Information Assurance team.

"Users will not be able to connect on-line without a certificate," he said. "This is not an ISF (Information Strike Force) or NMCI program - it is standard security procedure within the Department of Defense and is being implemented here in conjunction with NMCI."

A PKI certificate is a valid DOD identification, which sets up a signature for remote access service to a government intranet. The user has to provide credentials for the certification and attend a training session.

According to Allen, PKI training is being offered at NAVAIR Patuxent River in advance of NMCI rollout.

"Unfortunately, many people have not yet grasped the importance of the certificate because the absentee rate at trainings is extremely high," Allen said. "Thirty to forty minutes is all we ask."

According to Allen there are still nearly 100 laptop users at Patuxent River with no certificate.

"We don't want to get behind the power curve and get in a jam with large numbers of users flocking to us all at once," Allen said.

"And we certainly don't want our users to get stuck on travel unable to access the intranet."

A customer relations management team from the Information Management Division at NAVAIR Patuxent River is coordinating all PKI training. For scheduled training opportunities or for more information, contact John Kuchta (301-342-9861 or [email protected]) or Joe DiSciorio (301-342-9820 or [email protected]).

Photo by Vicky Falcón, for a higher resolution photo, please call 301-757-5116.

Caption: Heading out of town on business with their laptop computers, computer analysts Rich Everett and Rob Connor risk being denied access to their e-mail accounts unless they undergo required Public Key Infrastructure training.