Adfero Group HSPI

By Mike Beland
The implementation of President Obama’s executive order on cybersecurity is appropriately turning to incentives. These ideas makes sense; for the framework under the EO to decrease our nation’s risk from cyber threats, however, the incentives will actually have to realize meaningful adoption of standards among critical infrastructure owners and operators. As they say, the Devil’s in the details, and the details are where this laudable focus on incentives will need to motivate companies to adopt the EO framework.

The Office of the Chief Procurement at DHS sent a “heads-up” notice that ought to get more than passing interest from the private sector. Yesterday, DHS posted a Request for Information on FedBizOpps seeking comments and suggestions on the data fields in the DHS Acquisition Planning Forecast System (APFS). DHS officials have repeatedly promised to update the APFS and make it more user-friendly, and this RFI is evidence they are sticking to their promise.

For several years, Security Debrief contributors have joined Francis Rose on Federal News Radio to discuss security issues and the role of the Federal government. For the homeland and national security crowd, In Depth with Francis Rose offers insightful and informative discussions, and there is a growing audience of listeners outside the Beltway. Recently, the news and talk radio magazine TALKERS added Francis Rose to its annual list of the top 250 talk show hosts in America.

A significant part of America’s homeland security efforts is preparing to resist, mitigate and recover from disasters manmade and natural. With the private sector owning the vast majority of U.S. infrastructure, as well as the critical role businesses play in the community and the economy, private sector preparedness has long been a priority, since the 9/11 Commission issued its final report. It has taken a long time, however, for DHS’ Voluntary Private Sector Preparedness Program to gain momentum.

The Bipartisan Policy Center launched its Homeland Security Project today, led by former 9/11 Commission Co-Chairs Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton. Through this project, a group of 14 homeland security practitioners and scholars will create bipartisan recommendations on emerging terrorist threats, not unlike the 9/11 Commission.

I spoke to students at the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security. The school helps military officers get their master’s degrees, but mine was not a military audience at all – many were homeland leaders from throughout the public and private sectors. To be sure, America has gained a lot since the 9/11 attacks, part of which is a brotherhood shared by all homeland professionals..

By Steven Krause

The upcoming FY2013 budget request will begin to identify winners and losers in this new scenario. However they are applied, reductions announced on Thursday equal the elimination, roughly, of one Lockheed Martin or a General Dynamics plus a Raytheon – every year for the next 10 years. This new normal can spell terrific opportunity for firms that are willing to shed comfortable habits and plunge into the maelstrom with courage.

Occupy Wall Street is not just a protest. It’s an intelligence tool for protest organizers the world over. Protesters inspired by the growing Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City are spreading throughout the United States and the world to challenge the current business and governmental paradigm. That is why corporate leaders and their security teams must be aware of the tactics, information, capabilities and equipment protesters are using. Corporations must not underestimate the resolve of the protesters and their efforts to bring a negative view to the corporate brand name.

The Obama administration has made admirable and high-profile efforts toward export control reform. The President issued a November 2010 Executive Order establishing an Export Enforcement Coordination Center (EECC), to be housed within the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate the efforts of the multiple federal agencies responsible for enforcing our export control laws. Despite this, the EECC still has no apparent public presence.

A few weeks back, I wrote an “Open Letter to Nick Nayak” in which I expressed, in some rather direct language, my frustration at attending a DHS Office of Health Affairs Industry Day on the Biowatch Generation 3 technology – an Industry Day where oral questions were prohibited and where the DHS officials did nothing other than read verbatim from the slide presentation. Apparently that blog struck a nerve because the response was quick and, as it turns out, rather satisfying.

When the Aspen Institute does something, they do it exceptionally well. Last week, they announced the formal establishment of the Aspen Homeland Security Group, a reason for optimism about thinking and scholarship on homeland issues. Their membership is literally a “who’s who” on homeland issues. It was mentioned that this group would be available to DHS Secretary Napolitano and her successors to obtain strategic counsel on a range of matters. She certainly could not have asked for a better “kitchen cabinet” of people to talk to or meet with and that unfortunately is where there is a problem.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) released their joint investigative report on the April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico waters off Louisiana. There are a multitude of regulatory recommendations but two key lessons: 1) NEVER skip established safety routines and protocols, and 2) ALWAYS address risk into your decision-making.

By Chris Wiesinger
Recently, CSC joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in one of the first of what promised to be a full season of 10 years after 9/11 retrospectives. The over-arching theme of remarks centered on and around a recognition of the importance of effective public-private partnerships in countering an evolving threat that has no physical, political, bureaucratic, or corporate boundaries. Today, we recognize that the only way to respond effectively to this difficult threat environment is through active, consensual collaboration between government, the private sector and citizens.

A continuing (and welcomed) theme of some DHS presentations has been the importance of maintaining a dialogue with all Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stakeholders, including the private sector. While the messages have been well received in the audiences where I was privileged to sit, unfortunately, those messages do not seem fully to have permeated DHS – yet. My specific concern is triggered by an event labeled as a Biowatch Gen3 Industry Day held by the Office of Health Affairs on Monday, September 12, 2011. Unlike other DHS Industry Day sessions, which have been substantively informative, procedurally interactive and programatically insightful, this event was a complete waste of time for almost everyone there.

The world has faced tragic events of late: the Japanese earthquake and tsunami; the tragic bombing and shooting in Oslo, Norway; and post-Hurricane Irene floods along the U.S. East Coast. With these and other ever-present threats to our critical infrastructures and way of life, the National Defense Industrial Association’s (NDIA) 2011 Homeland Security Symposium is “Disasters: Preparing, Surviving and Responding to Dynamic Threats.”

The elaborate extortion bomb hoax in Sydney is an active reminder that extortion and kidnap for ransom are very real threats. This threat is real, not only in Australia but globally. Extortion through terror is often dismissed as some form of Latin American phenomenon, but that simply isn’t true. If something can be imagined, it can be done.

Tomorrow, after months of drafting, heated interagency discussion, and many rounds of redrafting, the White House is reportedly set to release its long-expected national strategy on countering violent extremism – the National Strategy on Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism. Our efforts countering violent extremism on the domestic front should hone in on three key areas of concern: countering extremist ideologies, enhancing social cohesion, and building resiliency within American communities.

Despite near-continuous pronouncements on the topic of resilience, the Administration decided not to define resilience in its latest Presidential Policy Directive/PPD-8: National Preparedness. It is precisely the difficulty of nationally defining resilience that should compel the government to do so. Deciding not to define resilience and its application to the Nation’s infrastructure condemns America to continuous validation of Einstein’s definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result.”

There was a time when the United States’ transportation infrastructure was the envy of the world. Times are changing and U.S. infrastructure isn’t. This poses a significant threat to America’s profitability, economic recovery and international competitiveness. Recognizing this, the National Chamber Foundation – the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s think tank – put on a program in conjunction with the Chamber’s Let’s Rebuild America initiative, “Infrastructure: What We Want, What We Need.” Here’s a breakdown.

Yesterday, the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) released the recommendations of its Community Resilience Task Force (CRTF), which argue that it is impossible to build a resilient nation upon protected yet aged, overstressed, exploitable and consequence-amplifying infrastructure foundations.