MCP Insights

Women in Public Safety Communications Have Come a Long Way

In this installment in our Women in Public Safety series in honor of Women's History Month celebrated in March, MCP Insights chats with Christy Williams, director of NCT9-1-1 in Arlington, Texas, and a past president of the National Emergency Number Association (NENA). Williams shares her insights regarding the challenges she faced as a woman over her career in a male-dominated industry, and how she overcame them on her rise to leadership positions at the local, state and national levels.

Women in Public Safety are More Valued, but There is Still Work to Do

In this installment in our Women in Public Safety series, MCP Insights chats with Dana Wahlberg, director of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, Emergency Communications Networks (ECN) division. Wahlberg shares her insights regarding how to survive and ultimately thrive in a traditionally male-dominated industry.

MCP Celebrates National Women's History Month

Public safety, like so many other sectors, has been historically male dominated. However, just as the technology the sector uses continues to evolve, so does the number of women entering the sector, and growing within it.

MCP’s Nick Falgiatore Nominated for Critical Communications Leader of the Year

Three years ago, MCP’s Nick Falgiatore received an IWCE Young Professional award, which was created to showcase next-generation leaders who are shaping the future of the communications industry. Now Nick is being recognized again, having been nominated for IWCE’s Critical Communications Leader of the Year award. This program recognizes individuals whose outstanding leadership has resulted in successful critical communications implementations. MCP Insights recently chatted with Nick about what his nomination means to him, the firm and—most importantly—our clients.

Eight Tips for Protecting Public Safety Organizations Against Phishing

In this recent post on cybersecurity training, we explained why it is one of the most crucial tactics government agencies for cyberrisk prevention—specifically, we highlighted how phishing messages can infect and ultimately bring down an entire mission-critical communications network. With email being such a widely used form of communication, malicious-threat perpetrators are increasing in quantity and sophistication by the minute, looking to take advantage of email’s prevalence in order to exploit it. Statista reports that more than 55 percent of emails sent are considered spam, and many of them contain phishing exploits.

The Public Safety Communications Challenges We’re Tackling in 2020

Earlier this year, public safety communications professionals from across the country came together in Austin, TX, to discuss and address the most pressing issues facing the industry at NENA’s Standards & Best Practices Conference. We discussed in a previous blog post why events like this one are critical to our industry’s success in continuing to improve emergency response outcomes. Which challenges are we tackling this year and what’s next for 911?

Strategic Planning for Public Safety

The expectations placed on public safety agencies increase every day—from doing more with smaller budgets and fewer staff to improving communications between dispatchers and emergency responders in the field, to decreasing response times and improving response outcomes. In today’s constantly evolving emergency communications landscape, the public sector can take a cue from private organizations and prioritize initiatives, goals and ideas through strategic-plan development.

The Role of LTE in the Utilities Sector

Southern Company is one of the largest investor-owned utilities in the United States, covering a large portion of the southeast. The company is known for being an early adopter of telecommunications technologies. Its subsidiaries include Southern Telecom and Southern Linc, companies dedicated to serving the telecommunications needs of power subsidiaries and charged with reselling any surplus capacity to outside entities. The Southern-owned, multistate, Motorola Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN) primarily was used by energy companies, but also by other commercial enterprises and even by some public safety entities.

2020 Public Safety Industry Outlook

We’re six weeks into a new year and a new decade, and public safety leaders are focused on pursuing more funding, implementing unconventional approaches related to staffing, recruiting and retention, and implementing innovative strategies to modernize their public safety communications technologies and networks—all while keeping them secure from cyberattacks, which are increasing in frequency and complexity.

Recently, we hosted our first webinar of 2020, during which more than 100 public safety professionals shared their top budget priorities and marketing challenges. Upgrading public safety technology, such as legacy computer-aided dispatch (CAD) and records-management systems (RMS) was a prominent theme, with more than half of participants citing this as a key priority in their organization for the coming year. Transitioning to Next Generation 911 (NG911) and staffing, retention and organizational planning also were reemerging topics from previous years.

Utility Communications Networks Resemble a Spider’s Web

Last fall I attended a conference presented by the Utility Broadband Alliance (UBBA), which caters to utility companies that are interested in using wireless broadband technologies for their operational needs.

Security Training: A Key Element of a Strong Cyberrisk Prevention Program

According to a recent report by Crowdstrike, cybersecurity threats to state and local governments increased in sophistication in 2019. While there have been improvements in how government agencies detect attacks, assailants continue to be relentless and inventive in their efforts to find IT infrastructure gaps that can be exploited. In a highly complex digital environment full of cybercriminals looking to exploit your organization’s vulnerability, a self-inflected wound can be especially frustrating.

DAS and BDA Technology Might Seem the Same—But They’re Not

As we move about the public safety sector, we often hear a common misconception, which is that distributed antenna systems (DAS) and bidirectional amplifier (BDA) systems are the same. But while they generally serve the same purpose—which is to boost radio frequency (RF) signals to enhance in-building coverage—they are quite different. Let’s explore the basic differences.