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Homeland Security CIO Outlines Priorities
With 9/11 commission hearings, lingering tension over this month's train bombings in Madrid, Spain, and threats of retaliation against Israel and its allies for the recent assassination of Hamas founder and leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin serving as the backdrop, Department of Homeland Security CIO Steven Cooper highlighted several priorities for his organization over the next 12 months and addressed the challenges he faces in meeting those objectives. The most pressing of these priorities are information sharing, IT infrastructure integration, and data security. "We are fighting a real war," Cooper said Wednesday at the Federal Office Systems Expo in Washington. "There are people who want us dead. Speed is important." Cooper's road map comes as the Homeland Security Department's inspector general's office issued a report this month assessing the department's strengths and weaknesses. The federal government formed the department a year ago from 22 agencies and their nearly 180,000 employees. While the report notes that successful transformations of this magnitude could reasonably take as long as seven years, Cooper said he doesn't have nearly that long to integrate the department's IT operations and get them running smoothly and securely.
www.informationweek.com
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Homeland Security chief Ridge tours G-8 site
Whether inspecting airport luggage or cars crossing the U.S. border, federal agents guarding Americans against terrorism must do their jobs with little margin for error, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge told law enforcement trainees Thursday."You add it all up, we probably have to be right a billion-plus times a year," Ridge said during a visit to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the nation's largest federal police academy. "Think about it. Terrorists only have to be right once." Ridge's pep talk to about 1,200 trainees at the center, known as FLETC, capped a short swing through coastal Georgia to check on security preparations for the G-8 summit of world leaders coming here June 8-10. Ridge toured Sea Island, a resort off the port city of Brunswick, where a large security force will be needed to protect President Bush and the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia. He also took a helicopter tour over nearby Savannah, where several thousand international delegation members and journalists will stay during the summit. Ridge's pre-summit inspection was closed to reporters, and he did not mention it during his remarks at FLETC. But a spokesman said Ridge wanted to see firsthand what's being done "to ensure this will be a safe and secure event."
www.ajc.com
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Truckers to Aid Homeland Security
It might be the newest line of defense in Homeland Security. The Transportation Security Administration is expanding its Highway Watch security training program, meaning truck drivers are now asked to report anything suspicious they see on their routes to law enforcement. Many truck drivers will now be called the Transportation Army. As of yesterday, the TSA of the Department of Homeland Security has entered a $19.3 million agreement with the American Trucking Association. It's all part of expanding its Highway Watch security training and awareness program. Truckers and many others are being asked to report anything suspicious they see on the roads to law enforcement.
www.wtoctv.com
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European nations agree on anti-terrorism czar
European Union leaders Thursday picked a politician with no experience in terrorism issues as the bloc's first anti-terror czar, moving to bolster the continent's defense after the Madrid train bombings. Gijs de Vries, who was born in New York and holds joint U.S.-Dutch citizenship, will coordinate work done by the EU's foreign affairs and interior departments in an echo of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The leaders also will study ways to streamline the sharing of information on threat groups, but they stayed away from establishing a European intelligence agency modeled after the CIA, proposed by Austria.
www.indystar.com
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Regional homeland security offices will be small
A Homeland Security Department initiative to unify the field structure of its 22 agencies will not create large field bureaucracies, a top DHS official said Wednesday. Asa Hutchinson, Homeland Security's undersecretary for border and transportation security, outlined the department's ongoing effort to create regional offices around the country in testimony before a joint hearing of two House Government Reform subcommittees. While the department plans to appoint regional directors to oversee homeland security efforts outside Washington, Hutchinson said it does not envision hiring hundreds of workers to staff the offices.
www.govexec.com
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National Biosecurity Board to Issue Research Guidelines
The Bush administration has taken a new step to prevent legitimate biological research from being misused by bioterrorists. It has created a national board to advise scientists on ways to conduct research so terrorists cannot adapt it. U.S. Health Secretary Tommy Thompson has been empowered to name a 25 member board with expertise in biology, security, and ethics to oversee the security of biological research conducted by government agencies and government-funded private researchers. "The advances in medicine that our researchers make save countless lives and improve the quality of life for all of us. Unfortunately, the power to heal can also be the power to destroy," he said. "The very tools developed to better the health and condition of mankind can also be used to harm it." To prevent such harm, the new National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity will help government agencies develop strategies for overseeing the security of biological research. Although the board will not have authority over privately-funded scientists, it will help develop a voluntary code of conduct that can be adopted by professional biological research organizations everywhere in the world. In addition, it will offer advice on ways to guide the publication of such research and its presentation at public meetings. President Bush's special assistant for homeland security, John Gordon, calls the advisory panel a good balance between national security and research that improves lives. He points out that the new policy does not involve legislation or other regulation of scientific research.
www.voanews.com
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U.S. to test train, subway screening
The federal government will test the feasibility of screening luggage and carry-on bags on U.S. trains and subways, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Monday. The announcement of the pilot program came two weeks after rail blasts in Madrid killed more than 200 people, bringing attention to the vulnerability of rail systems. Ridge said the government is not planning to screen the bags of all rail and subway passengers like at U.S. airports, but that it wants to experiment with random screening that could be used in high-risk areas or in response to specific threats. Different screening technologies will be tested, he said. "We are adding several new layers of security that we believe will help reduce vulnerabilities to our systems and make commuters and transit riders more secure," Ridge said. "Clearly, we could provide enough security to put the mass transit systems out of business. Trying to find that balance is something that we need to do." The location of the pilot program, which will begin in late April or early May, has not been determined. But Ridge said it will be at a station with commuter rail service. The Department of Homeland Security also announced it would develop a rapid deployment K-9 program for mass transit so that bomb-sniffing dogs could be deployed to help any transit system facing a threat.
www.ajc.com
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Determining which biometric technology is right for you
Biometrics, a security technology that uses some human physical feature for identification purposes, stands (or falls) on four legs: hardware, security level, integration with applications or operating systems, and user acceptance. Unless biometrics can meet your minimum requirements in all four areas, you should reject it. Of the four criteria, hardware is probably the simplest to grant a passing grade. There are many kinds of biometric hardware that are inexpensive and interface fairly easily with various software platforms. In choosing to go with a form of biometrics, you must balance the freedom from the much-hated (and often misused) password with the extra cost associated with adding hardware to the desktop (or perhaps many desktops). It's fairly simple to integrate biometric software with development platforms, but the details vary so much depending on the application and operating environment that it?s difficult to go into specifics here. Before you begin, you need to check to see if the appropriate APIs are available. You also need to look at user acceptance. If a particular technology can?t provide a high degree of security with low error rates, you can't use it anyway. Too many calls to the help desk won?t win biometric technology any friends in management or among users.
www.builder.com
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National criminal intelligence net slowly takes shape
Next month, a pair of law enforcement networks will link up with U.S. intelligence agency systems to share sensitive but unclassified information. The Regional Information Sharing Systems network (riss.net) and the FBI?s Law Enforcement Online (LEO) already are linked and let member agencies share law enforcement data. The Justice and Homeland Security departments have designated riss.net/LEO as the backbone for a National Criminal Intelligence Sharing system. Come April, the pair will hook up with the Open Source Information System, which now serves about 100,000 users at federal intelligence agencies, said M. Miles Matthews, chief operating officer of riss.net at Justice. Matthews, speaking today at FOSE 2004 in Washington, described the growing system of networks as an inelegant, lashed-together approach that depends on a relationship of trust between the participating agencies. ?This isn?t the architecture of the future,? he said. ?This is not our desired end state, it is a beginning state.? The nation cannot afford to wait on a seamless consolidated network to begin making critical information available to intelligence and law enforcement personnel as well as first responders, he said.
www.gcn.com
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Consolidation of border technologies seen as distant goal
A Homeland Security Department official on Monday said the department plans to consolidate the different systems and technologies that border officials use to track visitors entering and exiting the country but not in the near future. "We're looking to harmonize the systems and technology," said Jim Williams, who is in charge of the department's latest border program. But he added that current stand-alone systems for border officials are "not going to change anytime soon." Williams told company executives gathered for a Border Trade Alliance conference that using the same technology and system at borders would help speed the flow of trade and travel into the country. "We have long lines now," he noted.
www.govexec.com
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