CALEA Compliance Goes Undercover

Posted: 1/2003

special report
To Serve & Protect

CALEA Compliance Goes Undercover

By Khali Henderson

TELEPHONE COMPANIES LONG have worked with law enforcement to catch criminal conspirators using their networks. Stepped-up concern over security has put the heat on carriers to ensure they can meet mandates under the FCC's 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), requiring telecom service providers to support the ability of law enforcement agencies to conduct lawful, authorized electronic surveillance of call content and call data.

Carriers can face fines of $10,000 per day for each intercept request from a law enforcement agency they fail to comply with.

One company, VeriSign Inc., offers a one- stop, turnkey solution to help telecom carriers comply with CALEA. Announced last summer, NetDiscovery Services is positioned as an alternative to carriers procuring potentially costly new equipment or system upgrades and maintaining special security staff and facilities.

CALEA requires that carriers provision network elements for the intercept event, intercept the call content and data, deliver it directly to one or more law enforcement monitoring facilities in a standard format and provide secure records storage. Depending on the city, type and number of switches involved, VeriSign estimates carrier costs for properly administering intercept requests to be at a minimum $150,000 annually to implement a system, while maintaining the credentialed staff, secure processes and secure facilities required. Also, it can cost as much as half a million dollars per switch to upgrade.

"A lot of systems require a [delivery or adjunct] box to be CALEA complaint," says Raj Puri, NetDiscovery project manager, explaining that those can run between $50,000 and $200,000 each. "We eliminate that requirement."

VeriSign's maximum-security facilities and trained personnel can deliver all CALEA requirements for carriers as needed, at a fraction of the cost, he says.

VeriSign's nationwide signaling network infrastructure, digital certificate technology and secure data centers enable it to provide a scaleable service bureau solution that saves carriers significant capital expense and virtually eliminates administration costs involved in meeting the legal, technical and operational requirements of CALEA.

Using Verint Systems Inc.'s STAR-GATE, a solution that provides the means to access and deliver intercepted communications content and call data to law enforcement agencies, VeriSign offers a streamlined solution that meets the needs of wireline, wireless and cable telephony carriers.

Puri explains that once contracted by the carrier, VeriSign becomes the primary point of contact for law enforcement. "Once we receive the order through the carrier, we deal with it. It's completely hands off for the carrier."

Among the orders NetDiscovery processes are historical call records, pen registers or trap and trace (real-time call data as it occurs), as well as wire taps from both law enforcement and national security agencies. The company's personnel are set up to handle classified orders, having attained the appropriate government security clearances, Puri says.

In addition to eliminating a carrier's need to maintain such personnel, NetDiscovery also eliminates the need to connect to the thousands of agencies with authority to request information, Puri says.

The solution supports circuit switches and beginning this quarter it will support packet-based gear, such as soft switches. The company is working with Cisco Systems Inc. to support its soft switches, routers and gateways. One beta trial with an unnamed operator is ongoing, and Puri says there are several customers queued for commercial deployment of the packet-based support.

In addition to Cisco, VeriSign is working with four other "market-leading" vendors to ensure support for their packet-based offerings, it says. The company has the goal of supporting all suppliers, creating vendor neutral support for operators.

"Almost every provider has some sort of packet-based hardware, so support for packet under CALEA is critical. It cuts across all types of carriers from wireline to wireless to cable MSOs," he says.

The company is looking also at solutions for ISPs and their gear (routers, gateways, etc.) although they are not included under CALEA, Puri adds.

"Our goal from a service provider perspective is to provide the same basic service no matter what the network infrastructure," he explains. "We do the mediation between all types of technology."

How it Works
Source: VeriSign Inc.
Instead of maintaining multiple delivery connections from every switch to every law enforcement agency, carriers only need one connection to the VeriSign NetDiscovery Service.