Established in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, the Department of Homeland Security was designed to bring together all of the agencies that comprise the nation’s security apparatus so that the security failings of that day would not be repeated. And while a terror attack of the scale of 9/11 has not been perpetrated on U.S. soil in the years since, the mission of the department has also had to adapt and change with the times.
While many of the threats facing the country in the wake 9/11 are still very much the same, there is now an increased emphasis on trying to curtail attacks against soft targets in the form of active shooters, vehicle ramming and various others methodologies. Rather than highly organized terror plots, the agency now faces the challenge of trying to mitigate attacks carried out by so-called “lone wolf” actors, who oftentimes exhibit few warning signs prior to carrying out an attack.
The agency is also simultaneously tasked with trying to protect the nation’s infrastructure against both physical and cyber threats, which seem to grow ever more complex by the day. To discuss these and other issues, two of the agency’s high ranking officials - Scott Breor, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection, and Amy Graydon, Deputy Director of the Infrastructure Security Compliance Division (ISCD) in the National Protection and Programs Directorate- held a press conference on Wednesday at GSX 2018 in Las Vegas. Both Breor and Graydon weighed in on the various challenges facing the security industry and how the agency is working with both government and private partners to address them.
Soft Targets
One of the biggest threats that law enforcement and government officials have had to address more recently is how to better secure soft targets, but it’s actually a challenge that DHS has been developing mitigation solutions around for a while. Following the Paris terror attacks in 2015, Breor said the agency took a “serious look” at not only the programs they had in place relative to soft target protection but also how they operate as an organization. As a result, DHS developed a plan centered around mitigating attacks against soft targets and also established an executive steering committee across the agency that included representatives from all the departments within DHS that enables them to collaborate and address a wide range of security challenges.
Unlike the large-scale, well thought out attacks encouraged by terror groups like al Qaida in the 90s and early 2000s that also required a lot of operational planning difficult to keep from being detected, Breor said that vehicle-borne or lone gunman attacks carried out by self-radicalized individuals today do not have that same level of planning and are thus harder to detect.
But while restricting vehicle access and things along those lines weren’t previously a part of the thought process in securing large, outdoor events, Breor says that is now a primary consideration in the planning stages of various events today which will go a long way in mitigating these types of incidents moving forward.
“Our main goal… is to come in everyday and ensure that our cyber and physical infrastructure is safe and secure,” Breor said. “In today’s day and age, we can’t be caught off guard”
K-12 Violence
In the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting, Breor said the steering committee came together at the direction of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to determine what the agency could do to aid schools in reducing gun attacks and they subsequently put together a plan leveraging the department’s resources to help raise the baseline of security at schools across the country. Following the establishment of the Federal Commission for School Safety that is co-chaired by DHS, Breor said the agency was tasked with not only supporting the commission but also continuing with their own efforts to improve security in schools.
“That breaks down into educational awareness –getting out to the schools, school districts and the Department of Education within each state,” Breor adds. “For example, we have active shooter training and we offer that not only in person – the actual activity itself like ‘Run, Hide, Fight’ – but we also provide support for putting together active shooter plans. We also have protective security advisers across the nation. They can visit school districts and help them train and we also have tools for security assessments.”
Just this past July, Breor said DHS released a threat assessment guide produced by the National Threat Analysis Center with in the U.S. Secret Service that shows schools the programs they can put into place to identify “concerning behaviors.”
“If you have students you have concerns about, how do you manage that? This guide helps you put a plan in place,” he said. “
CFATS Progress
The Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program that was enacted in 2006 was put in place to identify facilities that warehouse dangerous chemicals across the U.S. and subsequently require them to enact various levels of security based on the volatility of the substances they handle. Though initially slow in its implementation, the program has matured significantly in recent years with many chemical facilities having conducted required site security surveys and implemented the necessary safeguards.
In 2014, Congress authorized CFATS for four years which, according to Graydon, provided much needed stability for DHS and the chemical industry as it did away with year-to-year funding approvals that had previously kept it afloat and also provided chemical producers with the impetus to make the capital investments needed to implement security updates to their facilities.
“The threat of terrorists using chemicals is as real and relevant today as it was back in 2006 when Congress created CFATS,” she said. “Together working with industry we’ve been able to implement thousands of security measures at chemical facilities across the country to make sure that our country is more secure. The program is non-prescriptive in nature, so we’ve been able to work with the individual facilities – about 2,400 of them – to make sure they are implementing measures that address detection, delay, cybersecurity, and work with first responders and other security management practices to make sure those chemicals are more secure.”
Over the past four years, Graydon said they have improved their tiering methodology, which is essential in identifying the most high-risk facilities, as well as work with partners in academia, industry and other federal agencies to ensure they have a scientific-based assessment. She fears, however, that the program, which is set to expire in January 2019, could take a step back if it doesn’t receive another long-term reauthorization.
About the Author:
Joel Griffin is the Editor-in-Chief of SecurityInfoWatch.com and a veteran security journalist. You can reach him at [email protected].
