Automated Security Awareness Briefing System (A-SABS)

The Automated Security Awareness Briefing System (A-SABS) is currently under development. If you are interested in participating in beta testing A-SABS, please respond by e-mail to the project manager with answers to the questions below.

A-SABS is a do-it-yourself system that enables anyone with basic computer skills to develop and deliver automated security awareness briefings on any subject that is covered by the Employees' Guide to Security Responsibilities or in any other online material. The security awareness briefing is in the form of a quiz on material that respondents are required to read either in the Employees' Guide or elsewhere on the Internet, your intranet, or your local area network.

A-SABS is like a computer-based training program except that it has no substantive content. The developer of the briefing adds the content by providing links to a web site, such as the Employees' Guide, or to any other location where information can be viewed. The developer of the briefing also inputs questions designed to test what respondents have learned by reading the specified material. These functions do not require any knowledge of programming or html.

Although developed specifically to enable automated security awareness briefings using the Employees' Guide to Security Responsibilities, A-SABS will deliver automated briefing or training on any subject matter that respondents can access by computer. To facilitate this broader use, the name of the program itself is customizable. A user is able, for example, to change the program name to Policy and Procedures Update Briefing System.

The program supports true-false, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blanks, or short answer questions. You, the developer of the briefing, can determine whether the respondent should link to the reading material before starting to answer the test questions, before each question, or after each question. The program can be set to provide feedback to the respondent after each answer or only after answering all the questions.

A-SABS can also be used simply to deliver an automated quiz on information presented in an oral briefing or in any mandatory reading. 

A-SABS grades the respondent's answers and, if desired, will print out a Certificate of Completion for each respondent who obtains a satisfactory score. It also provides you with a list of those who have passed and failed the test, as well as reports on such things as the relative difficulty of each question. 

A-SABS will be available at no cost to both U.S. Government offices and defense contractors. It remains U.S. Government property, so contractors may use it only for a U.S. Government purpose, such as a security awareness program to protect classified information. The program comes with the Defense Security Service seal on the opening screen. Government users may customize it by putting their own seal on the opening screen.

The briefing program comes in two parts -- the developer system used to develop the briefing and the respondent system used to receive the briefing and take the test. The respondent system will come in multiple versions to meet the different computer and security requirements of the various government organizations and defense contractors that install the program on their web server.

Initially there will be just two versions, one for use in a client-server environment, the other for use in a web environment with a server that supports active server pages (ASP) and MS Access. The version after that will be for organizations with servers that do not support ASP but do support Perl. Other versions will be developed as needed to meet the needs of our customers. 

If you wish to be advised as soon as A-SABS is available for beta testing, or wish to ensure that a version is developed to meet the requirements for use on your particular web server, please consult with your webmaster or computer support office to obtain answers to the following questions.

1. Will you use A-SABS in: (a) a client-server environment, (b) a web-based environment, or (c) both?

2. Which of the following scripting languages for communicating with a database does your web server support: ASP, Perl, PHP, visual basic, JavaScript, other?

Send the above information to the manager of A-SABS program development, Richards J. Heuer, Jr. at the Defense Personnel Security Research Center, e-mail HeuerRJ@osd.pentagon.mil, phone (831) 657-3008. 

OPENING SCREEN      IMPLEMENTATION PACKAGE HOME      EMPLOYEES GUIDE HOME