National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

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Since 1984, NCMEC has assisted law enforcement in the recovery of more than 132,300 missing children and has handled more than 646,600 reports of child sexual exploitation. NCMEC is the nation's leading resource on the issues of missing and exploited children. Technological advances have helped NCMEC increase its recovery rate of missing children from 66% in 1989 to 96% in 2009.

Since it was founded, NCMEC has operated its most critical systems exclusively on Sun Microsystems hardware and software. In addition to its internal case management system, NCMEC runs Missingkids.com where individuals can get information about missing children. People also can report sightings to the 24-hour call center by phone via a toll-free number (1-800-THE-LOST) or directly over the Internet. Sun designed Missingkids.com and provided a substantial amount of hardware and software to power the site, along with training and support.

Launched in 1998, the CyberTipline, a subsite of Missingkids.com, is the official online means for reporting incidents of child sexual abuse, exploitation, and child pornography. When a lead comes in to the CyberTipline, the system automatically assigns it to an analyst in the Exploited Child Division (ECD) at NCMEC. The information and associated images are electronically filed in a secure database. After the analyst prepares a report, it is made available through a virtual private network to the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces in every state, as well as other agencies such as the FBI, U.S. Customs Service, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and local law enforcement.

Sun Professional Services consultants designed the CyberTipline as a three-tier application based on the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE). This design provides high system availability and makes it possible for many users to concurrently submit leads. The Web reporting tier runs Sun Java System Web Server on a variety of Sun servers. The middle business logic tier uses JavaBeans architecture to validate identity and authorize user access levels. It then sends JavaServer Pages (JSP) pages back to the user. Java DataBase Connectivity (JDBC) technology connects the middle tier to the Ingres II database at the third tier. "The Sun consultants were exactly what we needed - experienced professionals who came in and evaluated what we were trying to accomplish," says Peg Flick, chief information officer at NCMEC. "They used their Java technology expertise and leadership to design a robust, scalable, and secure architecture that fits our unique needs."

The volume of incoming reports to the CyberTipline jumped dramatically following 1999 legislation requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to report child pornography incidents to NCMEC. To handle the growing demand, NCMEC added CyberTipline II in 2000 and has continued to upgrade its servers, many of which were nearing end-of-life. Sun executives at the Executive Briefing Center helped NCMEC plan for a consolidated IT environment that would increase system performance and throughput, save space, reduce operating and maintenance costs, and provide greater network security. The organization, which originally operated on about a dozen servers, now manages nearly 60 servers, including the Sun Fire T2000 servers with CoolThreads technology and Sun Fire V890 servers, all running the Solaris 10 Operating System. "Our biggest challenges are the need for lots of storage and for high-performance systems. Our goal is always to improve throughput so we can process data and get it to law enforcement as quickly as possible," says Flick. "We chose Sun SPARC servers because we're always looking for faster performance. And for storage, the Sun Fire X4500 server will be part of our next purchase."

Although the performance of the new servers has not been benchmarked, Flick says NCMEC analysts are definitely able to process more reports than they could in years past. This is due in part to the speed of the Sun SPARC-based servers and also to improvements that Sun consultants made to the CyberTipline application, automating many steps that the analysts previously did manually. "In that sense, productivity has increased, but so has the workload," says Flick.

Due to the typical budget limitations of a nonprofit organization, NCMEC's IT administrative staff has not grown in proportion to the increased volume of work. "We stick with Sun because of performance, but also because the hardware and software are so reliable that we can still maintain nearly 60 servers with just two people," says Flick. "And you can't beat the relationship we have with Sun; they've always supported us over the years."