Security professionals responsible for people screening at outdoor venues, theme parks, warehouse/logistics centers, schools, museums, houses of worship and other public places, all agree on one thing — there will be no going back to the old invasive, analog methods of security screening such as metal detectors, wands and pat downs. The future of people screening must be touchless and digital in order to deal with the realities of today’s threats from weapons and viruses, while preparing for those that will come our way in the future. Meet Peter George, Chief Executive Officer, Evolv Technology, who believes that physical security is where cybersecurity was more than 15 years ago and is now entering a similar transition.
The Partner Alliance for Safer Schools (PASS) has released the fifth edition of its Safety and Security Guidelines for K-12 Schools, which offers the most comprehensive information available on nationwide best practices specifically for securing school facilities, from subject matter experts across the education, public safety and industry sectors.
According to data extracted and analyzed by Atlas VPN, the United States residents reported 168,818 imposter scam cases amounting to $299.9 million in losses in the first half of 2020 with a median loss of $694. That is more than two times less than in H1 2019 when the US consumers reported 355,866 imposter fraud cases.
The Department of Justice announced that six men have been arrested and charged federally with conspiring to kidnap the Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer. According to a complaint, this group used operational security measures, including communicating by encrypted messaging platforms and used code words and phrases in an attempt to avoid detection by law enforcement.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao announced the launch of this year’s Stop. Trains Can’t. public education campaign, which will run through November 8. This national $6.6 million safety campaign will run on radio, digital, and social media, educating drivers not to gamble with their lives at rail grade crossings. The campaign will also target high-risk highway-railway crossings in Alabama, Arizona, California, Georgia, Indiana, Tennessee, and Texas.
Skyfire Consulting, a public safety UAS consulting group, announced the appointment of Michael Briant as Chief Security Officer (CSO) and Michael Rogers as Director of Public Safety. Both will team up and bring their experience to the Skyfire Academy, as they lead a robust training programs in the industry.
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has launched a crowdsourcing challenge to spur new methods to ensure that important public safety data sets can be de-identified to protect individual privacy. The Differential Privacy Temporal Map Challenge includes a series of contests that will award a total of up to $276,000 for differential privacy solutions for complex data sets that include information on both time and location.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) joined with public and private-sector partners to conduct an interagency Tabletop Exercise (TTX) called “National Harbor 2020 – Recovery Phase Exercise,” September 29 – 30, to test the processes and plans required by regional government and business partners following a notional catastrophic incident at National Harbor outside of Washington, D.C.
On September 1 and 2, DHS Policy’s Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention program (TVTP) hosted the 5th Digital Forum on Terrorism Prevention for approximately 60 mostly Atlanta-based civil society leaders. This year’s Forum gave these leaders an opportunity to learn directly from technology and marketing experts on how to combat terrorist use of the internet. Community leaders attended multiple sessions over the two-day Forum, including: “The Threat—Narratives & Recruitment in the Online Space;” “Responses to Terrorism;” “Research, Trends & Data;” “Tech Talk & Toolkit;” and “Online to Offline Interventions & Referrals.”
