Overview
Criminals and terrorists rely on the internet, social media and smartphones every day to plan, communicate and execute their activities. To assist law enforcement agencies (LEAs) in gathering data on these Subjects of Interest (SoI), communications service providers (CSPs) must comply with the lawful intercept mandates of their host nations.
However, as CSP networks expand and adopt more sophisticated technologies, maintaining compliance to national requirements becomes increasingly challenging.
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Drive seamless compliance
For more than 40 years, BAE Systems has supported CSPs in meeting their regulatory obligations and LI compliance requirements in a timely and efficient manner – with precision and reliability assured.
Our DataBridge solution is an established industry standard, delivering secure and high-performance LI capabilities across Fixed, Mobile and Satellite networks. Its intuitive, web-based interface streamlines user processes, allowing CSPs to maintain compliance without sidelining resources or hindering normal business processes.
Upon receipt of a lawfully authorised warrant, DataBridge provides operators with an intuitive workflow that automatically configures CSP infrastructure to collect the required real-time content and metadata of targeted SoIs – including voice, data, messages, emails and faxes. The solution:
- Manages the receipt of data from the CSP’s network infrastructure
- Formats the data according to LEA requirements
- Securely forwards the data to the appropriate Law Enforcement Monitoring Facility (LEMF).
The solution facilitates effective management of LEA warrants and provides an audit trail of activity – ensuring data remains protected, accessible only to authorised users and accurate for each individual LEA warrant.
Key features of DataBridge
- Cost efficiency – Our standards-based, cloud-native architecture supports LI for all CSP types, from the largest national-scale tier 1 carriers to new and growing providers.
- Secure by design – Built with security at its core, DataBridge is built and tested against CIS and OWASP security standards.
- Standards focused – We actively work with the 3GPP, ETSI and ATIS standards bodies to ensure that our solution consistently complies with the latest standards revisions.
- Cloud native – DataBridge is designed and built as a cloud native platform, enabling the freedom and flexibility to support the widest range of virtualisation technologies.
Exploring DataBridge functionality
Warrant Management System (WMS)
The DataBridge Warrant Management System (WMS) simplifies the processes undertaken by an internal CSP compliance team tasked with supporting lawful access to communications data. The work carried out by this team is often the subject of strict processes, procedures and scrutiny. The DataBridge WMS provides CSPs with a modern and intuitive web-based user interface designed specifically to meet the requirements of warrant data entry, authorisation, automated network provisioning, auditing and reporting.
DataBridge WMS can be deployed as part of a complete DataBridge LI solution or as a workflow tool, integrating with a CSP’s existing LI infrastructure.
5G Identity De-concealment
A key user benefit of 5G mobile architectures is significant enhancements to privacy and security, achieved through the introduction of concealed and temporary session-based identifiers. These advancements fundamentally change the LI operating environment.
The DataBridge 5G Identity De-concealer (5ID) addresses the gap in LEA capability introduced through these privacy protections, providing an integrated Identity Caching Function (ICF) and Identity Query Function (IQF) capability for permanent/temporary identifier de-concealment within the 5G domain.
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Based on the latest 5G LI 3GPP standards, DataBridge 5ID enables CSPs to reliably capture, cache and resolve associations between permanent subscriber identities and dynamic network identifiers.
DataBridge 5ID can be deployed either as part of an existing DataBridge LI deployment or as a standalone capability alongside a CSP or LEA’s existing LI solution.
Advanced Traffic Control
Being able to precisely control which network traffic is delivered, excluded, or acted upon by LEAs, while still maintaining auditability and standards compliance, is a key challenge facing CSPs in modern LI environments.
DataBridge Traffic Policy Function (TPF) operationalises the ETSI standard for LI traffic control by providing a complete, standards-based implementation that spans both the control plane and the data plane. The capability allows Traffic Policy Objects and Traffic Rule Objects to be created, managed and administered, while applying ETSI-defined traffic policies in real time to intercepted traffic.
DataBridge TPF enables consistent enforcement of lawful scope at scale, reduced operational complexity, clear traceability between policy definition and traffic handling, and a future-proof architecture grounded in ETSI standards.
DataBridge TPF can be deployed either as part of an existing DataBridge LI deployment or as a standalone capability alongside a CSP’s or LEA’s existing LI solution.
Lawful Location Access
The Lawful Access Location Services (LALS) ETSI framework is critical to giving LEAs access to timely, accurate and lawfully compliant location information when responding to emergencies, investigating serious crimes, or locating missing persons – while preserving the integrity of the subscriber’s privacy for all non-authorised requests. However, the workflows involved remain complex.
DataBridge’s LALS capability supports LEAs by providing a variety of secure delivery mechanisms within a fully ETSI compliant end-to-end workflow for all lawful requests to access subscriber location. This includes critical/real-time missions and extended surveillance operations.
The DataBridge LALS capability can exist standalone, inheriting all DataBridge product functionality, or as an extension to an existing DataBridge LI platform.
Simplified Warrant Handling
LI and Lawful Disclosure (LD) obligations are growing in volume, urgency and complexity. Yet for many organisations, the HI-1 warrant handling process still relies on approaches that were designed for a far smaller, slower and less regulated world.
ETSI TS 103.120 provides the foundation for a standards-based, interoperable, machine-to-machine HI-1 interface specifically designed to address the operational and technical challenges of warrant handling. Where eWarrantry is required, DataBridge delivers a ready-to-deploy, productised implementation of the standard that transforms it from a specification into an operational HI-1 capability.
It removes the burden of designing, building and maintaining a compliant interface, allowing organisations to adopt a standards-based HI-1 model quickly and with confidence. This in turn allows LEAs to directly share authorised warrant infomation with CSPs through a machine-to-machine interface, thereby automating the end-to-end process.
To learn more about BAE Systems DataBridge, download our brochure below or contact us to speak with one of our experts to discuss your requirements