Security Services

In 2001, an international, independent group of more than 120 emergency managers began specifying and prototyping the “Common Alerting Protocol” or CAP, data structure based on the recommendations of a report issued by the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC).

G4S Secure Solutions, a global provider of comprehensive security solutions combining technology, manpower and innovation, will give away iPads to 10 attendees at the ASIS show in Dallas this October.

Winners will be drawn from attendees who pick up iPad entry cards at the G4S booth and get them stamped by G4S security officers attending the show and circulating throughout the ASIS show floor.

The Obama administration has been cozy with the National Rifle Association – in fact, a Washington Post editorial recently called the administration “long AWOL on sensible and much needed gun regulations” – but it was still surprising to learn that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has just awarded the NRA a $182,000 contract so Border Patrol agents can use the NRA’s firing range for training purposes.

The award, which was announced online by CBP on August 17, was actually handed to the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action.

The folks at the National Protection and Programs Directorate of DHS are offering voluntary online training to improve security at chemical plants in the U.S. and expect about 400,000 employees in the chemical sector to take advantage of this education program.

If those estimates turn out to be accurate, it would mean that approximately 47 percent of the 850,000 chemical industry employees nationwide would take the online training.

The National Biodefense Science Board, an advisory council set up to provide expert advice to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, on chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological agents and their effects, will hold a public meeting in the Washington, DC area on September 22 to hear a report from its subcommittee on disaster mental health.

The meeting will run from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, but the precise venue has not yet been announced.

The Midtown Alliance recently went live with an upgraded, browser-based surveillance system from Iron Sky.

Midtown Blue, a public improvement district in Midtown Atlanta, will enable its officers to access camera footage using a map-based interface, with just two mouse clicks.

SPADAC, of McLean, VA, a provider of geospatial and predictive analytics technology solutions, has hired recently retired Army Colonel Matthew Artero as Vice President of ISR Programs.

Artero will support the company’s work with the Department of Defense, intelligence community and homeland security. He is a recognized expert within DoD ISR circles and has advised senior officials at DoD, NATO, the United Nations, and a number of foreign defense ministers.

For years, DHS has been developing a methodology by which it can assess the risks it attributes to a variety of threatening scenarios, so its senior leadership can make well-informed judgments about where and how to spend the department’s budget dollars.

To that end, it has been developing -- and refining  -- a methodology it calls Risk Assessment Process for Informed Decision-Making, or RAPID, which has thus far moved through three phases.

The U.S. Secret Service wants to subject the body armor its personnel wear to a rigorous set of ballistic tests, but it has not yet disclosed the type of armor its agents use, nor the kinds of ammunition and weaponry it considers to be the threat.

It has solicited proposals from experienced ballistic testing contractors to subject its armor to “multiple government testing standards” – including what’s known as V50 testing, as defined by MIL-STD-662F – but it won’t reveal classified details until it has chosen a handful of vendors to proceed to phase two of its selection process.