Question

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) consists of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Transportation Security Administration, United States Coast Guard and the United States Secret Service.

The DHS strategic plan states: “The Department of Homeland Security’s overriding and urgent mission is to lead the unified national effort to secure the country and preserve our freedoms. While the Department was created to secure our country against those who seek to disrupt the American way of life, our charter also includes preparation for and response to all hazards and disasters.”

Explain both data warehouses and data mining and describe how they could be used in the DHS.

Answer 1

Data warehouse :

In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for reporting and data analysis, and is considered a core component of business intelligence.^[DWs are central repositories of integrated data from one or more disparate sources. They store current and historical data and are used for creating analytical reports for knowledge workers throughout the enterprise. Examples of reports could range from annual and quarterly comparisons and trends to detailed daily sales analysis.

The data stored in the warehouse is uploaded from the operational systems (such as marketing or sales). The data may pass through an operational data store for additional operations before it is used in the DW for reporting.

Data mining : Data mining is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science. It is the computational process of discovering patterns in large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics, and database systems.

The ways we can use data mining in DHS is :

1) Evaluating use of credit cards by people working in DHS

2)Evaluating patterns of security issues like cybercrime , any illegal transportation issues , mine details about borde protection people

3)Identifying fraud activities in all departments if any

4)In forecasting of upcoming security issues based on past patterns using data mining

5)In call details analysis , to analyze all the incoming and outgoing calls if they are from people who cause harm to the country

6)For detecting any malicious intrusions

7)Detect Attacks on critical infrastructurs if any

Data warehousing in dHS : A data warehouse is a collection of data that's:

• Separate from operational systems
• Accessible and available for queries
• Subject-oriented by business
• Integrated and consistently named and defined
• Associated with defined periods of time
• Static (non-volatile); meaning that updates aren't made
• In DHS , a datawarehouse can be used to :
• Track, manage and improve security performance.
• Monitor and modify a security campaign.
• Review and optimize logistics and operations.
• Increase the efficiency and effectiveness of security management and development.
• Query, join and access disparate information culled from multiple sources.
• Manage and enhance inter organizational relationships.
• Forecast future growth, needs and deliverables.
• Cleanse and improve the quality of DHS data.