Homeland Security Vulnerability Assessments

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was formed more than a decade ago with a very significant mission of safeguarding America's homeland from hazards, threats, and national disasters. This department conducts its mission through securing the country's borders, preventing terror attacks, and responding to incidents or threats to its citizens (Miller, n.d.). Generally, the most important roles of the Department of Homeland Security are to lead a concerted national effort in securing the United States and preserving the American way of life. The department was established in 2002 in reaction to the 9/11 terror attacks and has since developed a nationwide strategic plan for evaluating and updating its mission statement and effectiveness of operations. These plans can be updated and transformed to accomplish the needs of the Department for Homeland Security and the American people.

It is essential to understand America’s critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR) and National Infrastructure Protection Program (NIPP) to ensure survivability of its critical assets, while maintaining security for America. “The plans are carried out in practice by an integrated network of Federal departments and agencies, State and local government agencies, private sector entities, and a growing number of regional consortia (DHS, 2009, p. I).” Several agencies work together to mitigate attacks on CIKR to protect public safety and security of the nation. A terrorist may stop at nothing to carry out an attack on CIKR. If an attack or natural disaster does transpire, each agency working together to restore the damage must be timely. Additionally, NIPP helps to identify hazards associated with the various sectors, and provides necessary security measures to harden resources (DHS,

The Quadrennial Homeland Security review suggest six strategic challenges that will drive the overall risk to the nation over the next five years. These six risks include: the terrorist threat; growing cyber threats; biological concerns; nuclear terrorism; transnational criminal organizations; and natural hazards (DHS, 2014). The terrorists threat is, arguably, the most publicized and popular of the six risks the DHS lists. The particular risk is unique in the fact that although it can be planned for and mitigated against by state and local governments, it is primarily a federal responsibility, or at least perceived so by most entities. The DHS itself was established due to the events of September 11th 2001 and it has since been a consistent

I understand that the position for this job is very demanding and is safety-sensitive (Bernardin & Russell, 2013). That means that this job requires an applicant who can handle functioning in stressful work environments. The applicant also has to be trustworthy and able to be granted a security clearance due to the sensitive issues of the job. Since the Department of Homeland Security is very important, I need to know the exact position that is open to determine which questions to ask and possibly modify the questions to fit the position of the job. The Department of Homeland Security’s main function is to keep the United States safe. Their jobs range from aviation and border security to emergency response, from cybersecurity analyst to chemical facility inspector (The Department of Homeland Security, 2016). Also, the same questions have to be given to each applicant who is applying for the particular position. Employers cannot modify the scores or use different cutoff scores because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin (The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2010).

I enjoyed reading your discussion question this week as you evaluated different elements of a Homeland Security Assessment plan that could be utilized to assess threats to a local, state, or federal government related to Infrastructure. We have seen over the past few weeks that there is a vital requirement to ensure that our governmental body in the United States provides that all public areas are not only safe and secure but also in a time of emergency they can easily be converted to a secondary purpose. This reserve of interstruchers will ensure that the needs of the Homeland Security Plan have the buildings, highways, and supplies readily available to put all aspects of the risk management plan into place (Fisher, 2004).

Since the September 11, 2001 events, the United States of America gravitated towards a more aggressive approach in its security. The result of the tragic events was the establishment of homeland security. The White House, the federal government and the Congress joined together to establish it. On September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush issued an executive order 13228 to establish an Office of Homeland Security within the White House and assigning the Governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Ridge as its Director (Bullock, Haddow, & Coppola, 2013, p. 4). Ever since, the United States (U.S.) Department of Homeland Security diversified and evolved the way it is today. The Homeland Defense was also integrated into Homeland Security to protect the U.S. soil and its territories. However, what are Homeland Security and Homeland Defense? This paper will address those question as well as covering their missions/goals, tasks, duties, and responsibilities. In addition, a section of this paper is the assessment of the critical infrastructure protection programs of the U.S. The assessment will also include the overall capability of the nation’s critical infrastructure protection program to ensure the survivability of its critical infrastructure.

When it comes to the protection and mitigating of any structure or organization risk analysis and vulnerability assessments must be conducts so as to know what’s to be protected, the threats manmade or natural disaster, ranking the potential of threat as well as the probability. In terms of critical infrastructure the risk analysis and vulnerability assessment has guidelines from Homeland Security Presidential Directive Number 7(HSPD-7).

Vulnerability assessments on terrorism were designed to establish any loopholes in a security system that are prone to harm or attack by a person who may have intentions to harm a particular location, an event or an individual. The main goal of terrorism vulnerability assessments is to establish the weaknesses of facilities across a variety of probable threats. Once such threats are assessed, physical and operational measures of improvement are put in place so as to make sure that such facilities are adequately protected. Such assessments can be administered to a vast range of facilities ranging from existing site management and new construction design over the life of service of such structures. This paper will delve into critical vulnerability assessment of three locations. The first location being Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden City, the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and lastly Corriell Institute for Medical Research.

The tragic events of September 11, 2001 highlighted the vulnerability to terrorist attacks. The importance of critical infrastructures to the government, people, and organization can be dependent on the vulnerability towards a national disasters, manmade hazards, and terrorist attack. Contemporary standard of what constitutes critical infrastructures has evolved as a wide array of threats has increased in modern times. Critical infrastructures represent aspects of the economy that makes the nation function as a whole and protecting America’s critical infrastructures and key assets presents an enormous challenge to the Department of Homeland Security.

The “Critical infrastructure, or CI, is a subcategory of infrastructure that includes those assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, which are so vital that their failure or destruction would have a debilitating impact on security, governance, public health and safety, public confidence, commerce, or other societal factors” (Bullock, Haddow, Coppola, 2016). According to the 2013 US National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) there are 16 of these sectors and throughout this paper we will discuss a cyber attack on the water supply sector. The best way to discuss the above will be through the evaluation of the impact that a cyber-attack could have on our water supply, and the probable third and fourth order effects from

As an agency like Department of Homeland Security or Federal Bureau of Investigation, they make such efforts to assure to protect the homeland and the United States citizens. "Homeland security decision makers should avoid bloated solutions and examine constantly old security measure to avoid petrifaction" (Neito-Gomez, 2011). Department of Homeland Security needs always to stay on top of the game; it is important to have eyes and ears everywhere. Technologies have been taking such a major part in defending security, and that is why Department of Homeland Security needs to have the most updated technologies and Intel to assist for the safety defense.

The Department of Homeland Security is task with a very important job of coming up with a critical infrastructure and key resources sectors in order to properly protect, withstand, and rapidly recover from all hazards whether is natural disasters or from a terrorist attack. Through a critical infrastructure set in place the Department of Homeland Security can provide strategic guidance to the public and private partners, encouraging national unity of effort, as well as coordinating the overall federal effort to promote the safekeeping and spirit of the United States (The Department of Homeland Security, 2015). The department of Homeland Security’s approach to identifying all the Critical Infrastructures and Key Resources Sectors,

After the events of September 11th 2001, the United States was left in a weakened state. What had happened? What had gone wrong? What did we miss? These questions are what faced a government scrambling to find a plan to ensure that these events did not have an encore. In the year following September 11th 2001 the United States government came together with selected delegates representing both parties of republicans and democrat and the 9/11 commission was erected. A new standard of security for the homeland had to be met and the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. This brought about the question, what assets to we need to protected and how will we as government fund and protect the security of those assets?

The 2003 northeast blackout that saw about 50 million people from the northeast US and southeast Canada lose power for about 2 days at the cost of $6 billion dollars according to JR Minkel (Minkle) and was the biggest blackout in North American history (Minkle). The disaster lead to a report that showed the blackout was caused by a combination of human error and equipment failure. To prevent issues like this in the future a “smart grid” needs to be developed that would monitor and repair itself in the event of problems. Essentially computers and applications would be the first responder when there is an equipment failure on the grid. The problem with this solution is that by placing more of the control of the power grid into the hands of computers and applications, it opens up the grid to cyber-attacks. The economic impact of a total or even partial failure of the power grid is astronomical and makes a very appealing target to those who wish to cause

Nearly every community has some sort of community risk, threat, and assessment plan that takes into account one of the six potential risks that are of concern to homeland security. Though each of these plans will likely differ from one another, many communities will have the same types of information in their plans. This essay will look at the Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment Guide (THIRA), the Community Risk Reduction Planning Guide, as well as FEMA’s National Preparedness plan. Any combination of these guides are a good starting point for every community in America. At top of every communities list as well as the nation is the protection of the critical infrastructure. Loss of infrastructure regardless of how big or small the community is could have very crippling effects on that community.