How to Protect Your Siren System from Hackers

Emergency siren systems respond in various ways based on the type of activation tone that is transmitted. The tones correspond to the type of event that has occurred. Sometimes they will sound in a continuous burst for a predetermined length of time, other times they will sound in a series of short bursts, and for the most severe events they might emit prerecorded audio that contains critical instructions, for instance evacuation orders in the event of a wildfire.

In April 2017, someone hacked into the emergency weather siren system operated by the city of Dallas. The sirens are intended to warn citizens of weather events so serious that they should take immediate cover. Most of the time the sirens are used to warn of tornadoes, which are quite common in the region in the spring. On this night, the hacker reportedly unleashed all 156 sirens in the system simultaneously. Some media reports indicated that they blared for about 90 minutes, while others indicated that they sounded more than a dozen times for 90-second intervals. Regardless, the hack spawned quite a bit of panic. It also generated a lot of questions from government officials, the media and citizens.

Last month, sirens went off in Genesee County, Michigan, without any emergency to justify turning them on. Reportedly, this was the third time the sirens were activated in a month without apparent cause, and county public safety officials believe that the system was hacked each time.

911’s 50th Anniversary Wish List: Advanced Mobile Location

Three weeks ago, my colleague, John Chiaramonte, made an impassioned plea to the four major wireless carriers. He asked them to serve the critical needs of the 911 sector and all those who dial those digits in their time of greatest need by turning on Advanced Mobile Location (AML)—now.  Today, on the 50^th Anniversary of 911, I am delighted to write about an alternate solution to getting life-saving enhanced location technology into the hands of the telecommunicator.

Yesterday afternoon, RapidSOS released the results from its NG911 Clearinghouse Android Emergency Location Services (ELS) Pilot Project held last month in three jurisdictions across the United States: Collier County, Florida, North Central Texas, and Loudon County, Tennessee.  Each represents a variety of topography and population, as well as integration with an assortment of existing public safety answering point (PSAP) software.

911’s History is Gratifying, but its Future is Thrilling

Considering that our planet is about 4.5 billion years old, a 50-year slice doesn’t seem all that significant—until one considers the amazing progress that can be achieved in such a timeframe. Take aviation for instance. On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, N.C., Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first flight of a powered aircraft; the voyage lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 feet. By the early 1950s, jets were traversing the Atlantic Ocean on a regular basis, and soon after the first non-stop flight to Australia occurred.

Shooting Death Underscores Urgent Need for Action on Swatting Incidents

Swatting, the practice of falsely reporting an emergency to elicit a response from a police department’s special weapons and tactics (SWAT) team, is not a new phenomenon for the 911 community.

What is new is that a death has occurred as a result of a swatting incident.

On December 28, 2017, a dispute between online gamers turned ugly. Media reports say that one group, seeking retribution for some perceived wrongdoing, contacted a known swatter in Los Angeles and convinced him to act on their behalf. The swatter placed a call, spoofing his telephone number, to an administrative line at city hall in Wichita, Kansas, and a security guard transferred the call to 911. The caller told the 911 telecommunicator that he had shot his father in the head, was holding his mother and sister at gunpoint, had doused the house with gasoline, and was contemplating setting the building ablaze.

The telecommunicator dispatched a police response to the address provided by the caller. When police arrived, a 27-year-old man answered the door, and immediately was told to raise his hands and walk toward the officers. Regrettably, he lowered his hands to his waist, and an officer found the action threatening enough to fire a single shot at the man, killing him.

When one stops to mull this for a moment, especially considering the type of response that is dispatched to such incidents, it seems amazing that a swatting death has not happened before.

As if this event wasn’t tragic enough, the man had nothing to do with the online gaming dispute. In fact, he reportedly wasn’t a gamer at all—the swatter had provided a wrong address for the actual swatting target.

A Look Back at 2017's Most Read Stories on MCP Insights

This past year, we launched an online repository of articles called MCP Insights. Our vision was to create a destination for public safety communications and government leaders to expand their knowledge, stay abreast of emerging trends within the industry and hear about new ideas that will help to advance the industry and ultimately, improve emergency response outcomes.

This article features the most shared posts among our readership this past year. Read on to learn more, and while you’re at it, subscribe to receive notifications when a new MCP Insight is released.

A Massive Outage that Affected PSAPs Across the US

In March 2017, an extensive outage impacted 911 service in a number of states. It revealed the need for increased communication among service providers during outages and similar incidents, but it also reminded us that PSAPs should take proactive steps to soften the impacts of unpredictable outages, beginning with an extensive refresh and review of their policies and procedures, as well as testing.

“Sunny-day” outages, like the one that occurred in March, is just another example of why the public safety communications sector needs to push forward with Next Generation 911 (NG911).

Social Media and Emergency Response: The Challenge with Leveraging Social Media Data

In a previous post, we examined how social media had a profound effect on emergency response in the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake that devastated the Caribbean island nation of Haiti. This marked the first instance of social media being leveraged in this manner, when disaster victims rose up to play a role in their own rescue.

Social Media and Emergency Management: A Powerful Combination

A network television show that debuted recently is centered on a crowd-sourcing platform that is used to solve all sorts of serious crimes, and in some cases, prevent them. While this may seem implausible, it actually is a case of art imitating life.

Data and How It Will Change the Public Safety Communications Landscape [WEBINAR]

Ready or not, data is taking over the world. So what does that mean for emergency communications?

The way in which public safety answering points (PSAPs) respond to both emergency, and non-emergency events, will change dramatically once public safety communications starts harnessing the the increasing availability of data in our communities. Here are some interesting stats:

• Internet-connected machines are expected to be more than 200 billion by 2020 according to research from Intel.
• Gartner predicts that the IoT market will eventually include 20.8 billion things.
• Technology giant Ericsson predicts that in 2018, there will be more IoT gadgets than mobile devices.

In today’s communications environment, PSAPs rely primarily on voice communications to provide an up-to-date picture of what’s happening at the emergency scene and communicate with other first responders. This is problematic when the communications infrastructure becomes disabled during natural disasters, or when a victim is unable to place a call for help.

How We Predict NG911 Will Play Out in the Public Safety Industry [Infographic]

From Next Generation 911 (NG911) to FirstNet, text-to-911 and all the emerging technoFrom Next Generation 911 (NG911) to FirstNet, text-to-911 and all the emerging technologies being implemented in the public safety industry, the way a 911 call is processed and dispatched is changing dramatically. The evolution represents a quantum leap forward in the level of service the nation’s public safety answering points (PSAPs) can provide to the public and first responders. But the migration is being slowed considerably by some of the same difficulties it’s faced before.

The public safety industry has always struggled with technology evolution: it takes significantly longer than it should and the process is far inefficient. Case in point – it took more than four decades to make 911 service available to the entire country.

CAD-to-CAD: Our Experts Weigh In

Is your 9-1-1 agency considering a CAD-to-CAD capability to increase information sharing and data interoperability between jurisdictions?

We recently asked two MCP subject-matter experts to weigh in on the topic of CAD-to-CAD. Last month, we hosted a webinar to discuss the benefits and technical considerations of a CAD-to-CAD approach, as well as where to begin from a technical standpoint if they decide to implement this solution (Watch the webinar on-demand here.)

In this post, we’ll investigate the benefits as well as the varying models available in today’s market. Be on the lookout for a future discussion on CAD-to-CAD guiding principles and how an agency should begin their journey.