Buchanan & Edwards is pleased to announce the Marine Corps Recruiting Information Support System (MCRISS) Recruiter Client Tool (RCT), has been nominated in the 2017 ‘ASTORS’ Homeland Security Awards Program.
Buchanan & Edwards (BE) is the prime contractor for the RCT product, a high-performance, on/off-line native Windows application giving Marine Corps recruiters the capability to perform their critical recruiting mission in disconnected environments such as schools, shopping malls, and other ad hoc recruiting venues.
(When we wear the Eagle, Globe and Anchor, we are standing on the shoulders of the many generations of Marines who came before us. We are proud of that legacy, and proud of the nation we fight to protect. Courtesy of Marine Corps Recruiting and YouTube)
The RCT application connects to an API located at the Marine Corps headquarters in Quantico, Virginia.
All user authentication, as well as each API call, is secured using Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificate verification.
The certificate is read from the recruiter’s Common Access Card (CAC).
The application was developed using Electron, a cross-platform environment that encapsulates Node.js and Chromium.
Since Node.js is used as the core runtime environment, JavaScript is used as the programming language.
This created a significant challenge as there is no single solution that provided CAC-based packet authentication available as an NPM package.
BE created a solution that integrates CAC communication using the PCSCLite libraries along with a JavaScript TLS solution that incorporated CAC signature creation directly into the TLS protocol stack.
Having this capability now allows BE to perform native CAC security processing outside of the traditional Web browser application environment.
Getting this right was no small effort as we had to understand the intricacies of CAC implementations at the lowest levels (the Application Protocol Data Unit – APDU).
The result is a library that can be integrated into any Node.js application (Electron-based or otherwise).
This is a 100% open source solution that gives the Marine Corps a much-needed capability in a license-free and portable application.
Marine Corps Recruiting Information Support System (MCRISS) Recruiter Client Tool (RCT) in 2017 ‘ASTORS’ Homeland Security Awards Program
The 2017 ‘ASTORS’ Homeland Security Awards Program, is organized to recognize the most distinguished vendors of Physical, IT, Port Security, Law Enforcement, First Responders, (Fire, EMT, Military, Support Services Vets, SBA, Medical Tech) as well as the Federal, State, County and Municipal Government Agencies – to acknowledge their outstanding efforts to ‘Keep our Nation Secure, One City at a Time.’
As an ‘ASTORS’ competitor, the Marine Corps Recruiting Information Support System (MCRISS) Recruiter Client Tool (RCT) will be competing against the industry’s leading providers of Innovative Smart Card & Reader System Solutions.
Good luck to Marine Corps Recruiting (MCRISS & RCT) on becoming a Winner of the 2017 American Security Today’s Homeland Security Awards Program!
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