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Recent Articles, Publications,
and Interviews
Be Safe and Have a Plan - An Interwiew with
Adam Montella
"The process of planning
itself is more important than the hard written
plan." Read More in
Inside Homeland Security
Do you know that nearly
one-third of companies in the United States do
not have a disaster recovery and business
continuity plan? In the aftermath of recent
disasters, it is apparent just how important one
is. Defying Disaster, an article in the
current issue of Actionline magazine
reinforces the need and highlights important
aspects for effective preparation.
An informative interview of Homeland
Security Specialist Adam Montella on the current
state of Homeland Security in the United States.
What works? What more needs to be done? Find out
Inside Homeland Security.
The Tennessee Valley Authority
(TVA) serves as a leading-edge case study for
coordinating efforts between private-sector
security forces and public law-enforcement
agencies for critical infrastructure protection
(CIP). Officials accept that CIP is a shared
responsibility between both public agencies and
private-sector businesses and other
stakeholders.
However, because most of the
nation’s vital services – water and electrical
power, for example – are delivered by private
companies, there is a significant challenge in
determining which private sector company,
or government agency, has the responsibility of
protecting a specific component of the nation’s
critical infrastructure.
With the increasing severity and occurrence of
natural and manmade disasters during the last
two decades, the microscope of public scrutiny
has turned to some unlikely suspects – private
industry and individual citizens. The California
wildfires, Hurricane Katrina, and the 9/11
terrorist attacks are prime examples of just how
damaging a single catastrophic event can be when
stakeholders do not adequately prepare.
There are several events in
recent memory of such national significance that
they have caused a lasting as well as dynamic
change from “business as usual” in the disaster
response arena. Hurricane Andrew spawned the
Stafford Act in 1988, for example, forever
changing how the Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) and other agencies respond to
disasters. In 1996, the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Act,
based on the heightened threat of terrorism in
the United States, gave birth to the Domestic
Preparedness Program and the Office for Domestic
Preparedness.
However, the Stafford Act did
not foresee the massive breakdowns that occurred
between the states, the federal government, and
local communities in response to Hurricane
Katrina, and the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Act did
nothing to prepare for the massive resource
coordination effort needed to respond to the 11
September 2001 terrorist attacks and to the
release of anthrax at several offices on Capitol
Hill and the testing of thousands of suspected
packages with “white powdery substances” that
followed shortly thereafter.
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