Swatting Has Serious Implications and Shouldn’t Be Ignored
A rash of “swatting” incidents recently occurred across the country.
A rash of “swatting” incidents recently occurred across the country.
Twenty years ago, communications interoperability in the emergency response sector was thought of solely in terms of two-way voice communications delivered by land mobile radio (LMR) systems.
On July 23, 2007, a home invasion occurred in Cheshire, Connecticut. During the invasion, the family that owned the home suffered numerous horrors — the husband was severely injured when beaten with a baseball bat, while his wife and two daughters were murdered; the wife and one daughter were sexually assaulted. The perpetrators then burned down the house to destroy the evidence.
Over the last several years, Mission Critical Partners aggressively has pursued acquisitions that expand the services and solutions that we can offer to clients in support of their missions. That work continues with the addition of Secure Halo, which is headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland. This acquisition is the fifth executed by MCP in the last four years.
MCP Insights asked the firm’s subject-matter experts to predict what will occur this year concerning communications technologies, operations, and governance in the public safety sector (law enforcement, fire/rescue, emergency medical, and 911) and the public sector (government and justice). Here’s what they said:
On Friday, December 17, Laurie Flaherty, the longtime coordinator of the National 911 Program, will retire. That will be a sad day for the 911 community and for me personally. I first got to know Laurie when I was editor-in-chief of Urgent Communications. Our paths crossed often over the years at conferences, usually when I was covering an educational session where she was speaking. Inevitably, I would make a beeline to her as soon as the session ended, at which time she would patiently answer every question that I had, generously giving me all of the time that I needed.
Imagine that you're a fisherman, and you need to catch a large volume and wide variety of fish. Now imagine that the fish scatter amongst numerous rivers and streams, a situation that makes your task far more time-consuming and difficult. Moreover, you risk missing some types of fish you need to catch to fulfill your mission, either because you can't find them or you run out of time.
This metaphor describes the environment in which public safety and justice organizations are working today. Many systems exist that generate or store information vital to investigators, prosecutors, judges, and corrections officials. However, many are unable to access the information when they need to do so. That's because siloes exist in these systems, making it incredibly challenging for the individual entities that comprise the public safety and justice ecosystem — the 911 community, law enforcement, prosecutors, the courts, and jails/prisons — to exchange data. Siloed systems are analogous to the rivers and streams in our metaphor.
Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon, as well as the hijacking of a third commercial airliner that day, United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers confronted the terrorists. The attacks resulted in 2,977 fatalities and more than 25,000 injuries. It is the deadliest single incident for firefighters and police officers in the U.S., who respectively lost 340 and 72 members that day. It remains the deadliest terrorist attack our history.
In my previous blog on cybersecurity, I provided a high-level perspective on the cybersecurity environment for justice organizations today. I noted that the environment is worrisome — it is a virtual certainty that cyberattackers, at this very moment, are looking for a way to infiltrate your organization’s networks and systems.
But I promised a progression (crawl, walk, run) that you can employ immediately to quickly begin thwarting cyberattackers and protecting your networks and systems, as well as the critical data and applications that run on them. This strategy is based on industry best practices and thought leadership to which MCP has actively contributed.[1]
Cybersecurity has become a huge problem for any organization that is operating networks and/or systems, but especially so for those in the government sector, particularly public-safety and justice agencies.
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 critical communications networks. Sign up to receive these advisories in your inbox as soon as they are released.
Having attended dozens of educational conferences over the decade that I served as editor-in-chief of Urgent Communications and Fire Chief magazines, I know an excellent one when I see it—and I can report without fear of contradiction that the second-annual Conference for Advancing Public Safety (CAPS)—being presented by Mission Critical Partners (MCP) on June 15-16—is shaping up to be an excellent educational event.
How can we support your mission? From design and procurement to building and management, our national team of experts is here to help…because the mission matters.
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