Recently in Opinion Category

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has established a Commission on
Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency - the administration that will take office in January 2009.
The goal of the nonpartisan Commission is to develop recommendations for a comprehensive
strategy to improve cyber security in federal systems and in critical infrastructure.

To download the Commission's fact sheet, click here...

Cybersecurity commission' members recently participated in a panel discussion at Black Hat  ... "What we're really trying to figure out is how to collaborate" between government and industry "Information sharing is broken. It's a one-way send" ... "We're not recommending to do away with InfraGard" ... to read more about the recent Black Hat panel discussion, click here...

A recent report commissioned by the US Department of Defense examines a number of hypotheses that might explain why Al Qaeda has not launched another attack on US soil since 9/11, questioning whether US counter-terrorism capabilities simply have succeeded in thwarting another attack or terrorists harbor reasons for refraining from an attack.

To read a discussion on this report, click here...

To download the report (.pdf), click here...

The U.S. national security system is broken and needs major changes, according to a recent congressional mandated study.

To view the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR) news release, click here...

To download the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR) report, click here...

The threat assessment equation that DHS uses to calculate "RISK" addresses international terrorism and not domestic terrorism or natural hazards..  To read more, click here...

EDITORIAL COMMENT:  This type of funding used to be evenly split between the states with some high risk regions getting an additional supplement. That approach resulted in a per-capita skew to the funding.  Ignoring domestic terrorism and especially natural hazard risks is very short sighted.  Although the Bay Area gets its fair share of international terrorism related funding it needs even more funding in this regard because of the earthquake risk.  Fortunately the local end users of this funding are beginning to take an all-hazards approach to the actual investments in disaster mitigation, response, recovery and preparation funding ... for example improvements in first responder communication systems helps disaster prepardness for all-hazards.

For more info see the GAO report, DHS Risk-Based Grant Methodology Is Reasonable, But Current Version's Measure of Vulnerability is Limited, June 2008, GAO-08-852.  To downlpoad this report, click here...

DHS has announced that it is taking steps to enhance its Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN). Known as HSIN Next Generation (NextGen), the enhancement will provide a secure and trusted national platform for Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) information sharing and collaboration between federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, private sector, and international partners. To read DHS press release, click here...

I have a HSIN account and used the current HISN during the 2006 Golden Guardian exercise.  It is really nothing to brag about.  As I see it the real challenge is to develop one disaster information network that will support all the disparate users, including InfraGard.