Security & Business Resilience

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The House of Representatives voted to pass legislation requiring DHS to form a social media working group that would provide guidance and preparedness for social media use during times of national crisis.

Rutgers University has created a new center for public safety and homeland security to prepare for and respond to natural disasters and terrorist threats. The center will include a one-stop online portal showcasing the collaborations among Rutgers experts across all statewide locations.

The Indiana University System is currently undergoing FEMA’s Disaster Resistant University process, which helps higher education institutions identify specific campus risks, develop a risk assessment and build a platform for an all-hazards preparedness program.

According to a joint survey from the British Insurance Brokers’ Association (Biba) and the Cabinet Office in 2012, 83 percent of insurers would give a discount or improve terms to a business interruption policy if a business continuity plan were in place.

Probably the most important first step an organization should take in developing their BCP/COP program is to conduct an inventory of all of the enterprise’s processes, assets and resources (PAR). No one has the time or resources to boil the ocean, so once the inventory has been completed, the next step involves prioritizing the PAR list from the most critical to the least important.

That’s where mass notification systems come into play, as well, as is the case with MillerCoors’ Fort Worth, Texas, brewery, which is located in Tornado Alley and sees about 25 tornadoes each year. The brewery employs 105 employees spread across 150 acres, and it brews 9 million barrels a year. It houses an on-site refrigeration system with 150,000 pounds of ammonia to assist with the brewing process.

Nearly half (45%) of the executives surveyed noted that overseas risks pose a greater threat to their company than domestic ones, while one-third (33%) reported that overseas risks are an equal threat. In addition, nearly half (48%) of the companies had experienced at least one loss related to conducting business overseas over the last three years.

The number of electrical outages affecting 50,000 or more people for at least an hour doubled during the decade up to 2012.  Most of the blackouts were caused by damage to large transmission lines and substations during extreme weather events, a new analysis from nonprofit Climate Central says. Michigan has the most outages, followed by Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

LA Mayor Eric Garcetti wants buildings across Los Angeles to be graded for their seismic safety.

A NIST report about its investigation into the 2011 Joplin tornado calls for nationally accepted standards for building design and construction, and public shelters and emergency communications to reduce deaths caused by tornadoes.