An axiom within the criminal-justice community is that the more evidence that can be captured and leveraged by the prosecution, the better. Corollary to that axiom, however, is that evidence—regardless of type or quantity—has no utility if it is not easily accessed and shared, or worse, somehow falls through the cracks. The way to prevent such problems from occurring is to deploy a digital evidence management solution, or DEMS.
As part of our effort to inform our clients about potential and serious cybersecurity issues, MCP provides advisories about vulnerabilities and exploits that could threaten the operations of their mission-critical communications networks. Sign up to receive these advisories in your inbox as soon as they are released.
This week, there is a new critical alert that requires the mission-critical community’s immediate attention.
The average number of breached data records, including credentials, per U.S.-based company, is an astounding number—28,500.
The Mission Critical Partners (MCP) team was saddened to learn of the passing of two incredible public safety leaders, and friends of MCP, this past week – Former Allegheny County (Pennsylvania) EMS chief and fire marshal Robert Full and Robert Bloom, Public Safety Systems Administrator, Alexandria, Virginia, Department of Emergency and Customer Communications (DECC).
Topics: Industry News
In April, the Federal Communications Commission issued an order that enables unlicensed devices to share 1200 megahertz (MHz) of spectrum in the 6 gigahertz (GHz) band, to meet the growing demands for wireless broadband services.
The FCC cited in its order a Cisco report that projects mobile data traffic will more than double between 2017 and 2022. It also cited an Ericsson report that predicts the average amount of data per month used by a smartphone will increase from 7 gigabytes (GB) in 2018 to 39 GB by 2024. A large portion of this mobile data traffic is expected to be delivered on an unlicensed basis utilizing Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and similar protocols.
As part of our effort to inform our clients about potential and serious cybersecurity issues, MCP provides advisories about vulnerabilities and exploits that could threaten the operations of their mission-critical communications networks and systems. Sign up to receive these advisories in your inbox as soon as they are released.
Topics: Cybersecurity
The cybersecurity problem that public safety agencies have is very big and it’s not going away—if anything, it’s only going to expand as time passes. That was the consensus of a panel convened for MCP’s inaugural Conference for Advancing Public Safety, which was presented last month.
“The threat’s there—something is going to happen, and we need to be prepared for it,” said Thomas Stutzman, director, Indiana County (Pennsylvania) Emergency Management Agency.
First responders historically have arrived at an emergency scene armed with only the information that emergency communications center (ECC) telecommunicators extracted while talking with a 911 caller. However, such callers usually are experiencing one of the worst moments of their lives, which makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for most to deliver complete, coherent information. As a result, first responders are left to piece together what to expect upon arrival.
Many emergency communications centers (ECCs) across the United States are migrating toward Next Generation 911 (NG911) systems because their advanced capabilities make them a quantum leap forward from legacy 911 systems. The biggest benefit is that the geospatial data generated by geographic information systems (GIS) is much more accurate than the automatic location identification (ALI) and master street address guide (MSAG) data used in legacy systems.
Because of this, geospatial data will be used in the NG911 environment to locate emergency callers, resulting in fewer misrouted 911 calls, which will save precious time when lives are on the line. Roughly two decades ago, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) conducted a study of emergency incidents in the Salt Lake City area; extrapolating the data findings, the commission concluded that about 10,000 additional lives could be saved each year for every one-minute reduction in emergency-response time.
A lot of data is being collected about 911 service in the United States by a plethora of government entities at all levels. The data collected by everyone—from local and regional authorities to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)—is used for a variety of reasons:
As part of our ongoing effort to keep our clients informed about the latest cybersecurity threats, we issue advisories whenever new threats are detected. If you would like to receive such advisories in the future, update your preferences here.
A previous post examined some of the key technology factors that should be considered as the public safety community mulls how to evolve its communications capabilities going forward. This post explores operations, governance and funding considerations.
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