Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Selects BlackBerry’s AtHoc for Business Continuity and Crisis Communication

Major Regional Transit Authority Deploys AtHoc Technology to Create a Secure Regional Crisis Communication Network

BlackBerry today announced that Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has selected AtHoc, a division of BlackBerry, for its new highly secure alerting and crisis communication system.

WMATA’s primary objective for this stage of deployment within the IT organization is to be able to distribute certain actionable information to and from the Information Technology’s (IT) Metro Enterprise Monitoring Center (MEMC), Helpdesk and Customer Services sections within the Office of Data Center and Infrastructure (DCI).

The new AtHoc system enhances how alerts and critical events are shared with key staff members, on call personnel and decision makers. Protecting Personally Identifiable Information (PII) was a critical requirement, which AtHoc’s highly secure infrastructure and technology was able to deliver.

Serving the Washington Metropolitan area, WMATA must coordinate with a large number of internal departments and external agencies in times of crisis. Leveraging this deployment, WMATA will use AtHoc Connect(TM), AtHoc’s platform for secure interoperable crisis communication to create secure, unified crisis communication network that enables rapid communication between internal teams, first responders, local facilities, and key decision makers.

Such information sharing includes cross-agency exchange of messages results in improved situational awareness and rapid coordinated response. Additional organizations WMATA is targeting to join the new network include several adjacent airports, county law enforcement agencies including fire, rescue, as well as multiple Federal agencies.

“Our first priority is to ensure that critical communications are sent out reliably and securely,” said Claude Swanson, Chief of Data Center & Infrastructures for WMATA.

“The ability to securely coordinate and communicate with our staff, decision makers and external organizations in critical situations is of tremendous value to WMATA to ensure actions are communicated to the right people quickly.”

Dubhe Beinhorn, Vice President of AtHoc’s Homeland Security and Government Group said,

“We welcome the opportunity to partner with WMATA in the organizationally diverse and critical National Capital Region.”

“We are proud to support WMATA’s innovative achievements in safety and technology leadership.”