Archives: February, 2010

Nominated last October, Caryn W. Wagner has now been confirmed and installed as the Department of Homeland Security’s new Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis (I&A). This makes Ms. Wagner a key point person for managing information relating to terrorist threats from both law-enforcement officials and federal agencies. She will also run DHS’ Joint Fusion […]

There’s simply no substitute for alert, sometimes intuitive, security guards as a last line of defense. For example, here’s an item from the Vancouver Olympics: A mentally ill man with a homemade security pass got to within a dozen steps of Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, in a dignitaries seating area at […]

Got any beefs – or, let’s simply say, suggestions – for the Department of Homeland Security?  From now till March 19 is the ideal time to be heard. That’s the remaining span of DHS’ Open Government initiative, paralleling an emphasis of the Obama Administration overall. DHS has set up a a new website explaining how […]

Here’s a rundown on what can be said publicly of the security preparations for the Vancouver Olympic Games, beginning tonight.

This post is a bit of a diversion – it doesn’t deal with security devices or tactics. Yet it is the most poignant possible reminder of  the stakes in security, what the discipline is about. ABC petitioned the National Institute of Standards and Technology for the release of photos of the 9/11 World Trade Center […]

2010 began on a note of rising tension,  with al Qaeda threatening attacks in the U.S. and abroad. So it’s hard to see how the homeland security market can be seen to be growing by, as Security Debrief puts it, a “healthy” 12 percent. Security spending is indeed growing, but that reflects continuing threats, a […]

Al Qaeda is said to be patiently planning an attack on the U.S. with a weapon of mass destruction (WMD), with anthrax being its most likely modality. A former CIA official has published a report on al Qaeda’s interest in WMDs The report, by  Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science […]

CNN: U.S. intelligence chiefs say another terrorist attack on the U.S. in coming months is “certain”. Al  Qaeda is said to be concentrating on making its modalities harder to detect.

USA TODAY recently interviewed top U.S. security officials to get their sense of what the next decade might hold in terms of terrorist threats or attacks. The last decade, of course, included 9/11. We won’t attempt to summarize the responses here, but the interviews are worth the attention of security managers everywhere. Those interviewed are: […]