U.s. Department Of Homeland Security

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.

The idea of the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security evolved into the biggest U.S. government reorganization in American history. Prior to the establishment of the Department, Americans increasingly became concerned about terrorism on our soil. This concern was triggered by the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 as well as the discovery of a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics in 1994. Additionally, it became more apparent to the Americans that terrorism has a growing global reach. The U.S. commissions looked at different aspects of the U.S. national security, the Hart-Rudman Commission, the Gilmore Commission as well as the National Commission on Terrorism. The members of the Commission as well

On September 11, 2001, there were 2,996 casualties and more than 6,000 others were injured in the terroristic attacks of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Some may say that these acts of terrorism changed the American homeland security for the better, others disagree. Since the events of September 11, 2001, the Department of Homeland Security was created and expanded into one of the largest divisions of the federal government. This paper consists of the lack of homeland security before September 11, 2001, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and the development of this department, which is leading America to be safer since the last act of terrorism.

The United States Department of Homeland Security is a section of the U.S. federal government that protects the United States on a daily basis. The Department of Homeland Security is for the protection of the United States of America from terrorist attacks, man -made accidents and natural disasters. This department also has made a scale of terrorism threat which goes from low to severe. The Department of Homeland Security was formed on November 25, 2002, following 9/11. September 11, 2001, was proof that America was as a target to terrorism like other countries and killed 2,977 people. It was 2002 when The United States Department of Homeland Security was formed. Following 9/11, George Bush announced the creation of the Office of

After the attacks on September 11th, 2001 the United States was forced to reassess its policies over the defense of the country within its borders. Until that time the United States’ homeland security was under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice (Masse, O’Neil, & Rollins, 2007). After the attack the Executive branch of the government created a new organization that would be responsible for deciding where the biggest threats to the country were. This was the birth of the Department of Homeland Security. The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for assessing all risk to the Nation within its borders and developing way to mitigate these threats before a disaster can take place. One of the documents that the Department of

The Homeland Security Division was formed in the wake of terrorist attacks and implemented by President Bush after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. This policy was formed to place a national policy into place for Federal departments and local agencies to identify and protect the United States from additional terrorist attacks. What many don’t know is that this plan defines orders and roles for local state and governmental agencies as well, in order to carry out the goal. I will explain how six sub-groups come together to form the Department of Homeland Security’s one enterprise operation.

The DHS continues to evolve in order to meet present and future challenges. The organization defines its current mission and goals while using current intelligence to forecast future threats. The DHS has identified areas in need of improvement in order to prepare for future threats. Citizens criticize policies in national security as infringing on civil liberties, and an ongoing debate ensues over the sacrifice of civil liberties in the name of national security. The DHS continues to evolve in analyzing future threats and identifying means for the organization to meet them.

One of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) most important missions is protecting critical infrastructure. Assessing CI vulnerabilities is critical to strengthening their capabilities and ensuring resiliency. Since most of them are privately owned, the Department partners with the private sector in conducting voluntary, non-regulatory vulnerability assessments (“Critical Infrastructure”, 2015). According to Homeland Security (2015), vulnerability assessments are the foundation National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) which outlines how the government and the private sector work together to manage risks to achieve security and resiliency goals (“Critical Infrastructure”, 2015). Protecting America’s electrical power grid is especially complicated because all of the other CIs depend on the energy sector’s

After 9/11, the United States completely revamped its entire system of defense, policy prescription and stance with regards to terrorism; both foreign and domestic. The Department of Homeland Security was created, direct militaristic action was taken against these terrorists and domestic and foreign policy was changed in order to combat the new threat. While much of this “war on terror” was fought far away from U.S. soil, that did not stop these new policies from affecting the lives of U.S. citizens directly. The most noticeable, controversial and powerful of these policies was the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act (Breinholt, 23-25). While the PATRIOT Act has drawn the ire of many U.S. citizens due to its far reaching effects, lack of jurisdictional or

Accordingly, this document has been developed to provide information regarding DTL Power and the measures that have been developed and implemented to safeguard its information and information systems from a cyber threat. This document is broken down into several sections that will provide an analysis of DTL Power and the energy sector; as well as the effectiveness of cybersecurity technology/policies in the energy sector, the team’s cyber strategy, and budget.

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

One of the primary reasons critical infrastructure are being attacked now, because they are under the controlled of Internet-connected devices; or have network driven components that communicate through the infrastructure (Goldman, 2013). Decades earlier infrastructure was manually driven and it required touch labor or human intervention to function. Innovation have change the way critical infrastructure is controlled and operated. Another reason behind the increased attacks on critical infrastructure, it has become an easy way to inflict pain or create dismay. Some attacks are state-sponsored and others may be organized intrusions, in either case they know infrastructure has vulnerabilities and how to exploit them.

However, a new breed of threat has emerged: the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT). While future versions of CIP Standards are beginning to address APTs, many entities are not waiting for their defense to be “mandated” by law. Many entities are preparing by improving their ability to detect threat patterns and designing improved threat response and mitigation. The investment in prevention, detection and correction of cyber threats has emerged as a major governance goal of most power generation and transmission entities.

A Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system consists of both hardware and software that collects critical information to keep a facility operating (Johnson & Merkow, 2011, p. 227). SCADA system vulnerabilities include the lack of monitoring, slow updates, lack of knowledge about devices, not understanding traffic, and authentication holes (Adams, 2015). When an organization doesn’t monitor the network, it makes it impossible to notice suspicious activity. System updates are a very important part of protecting against vulnerabilities, even though it may be seen as an inconvenience. The lack of knowledge about the devices is somewhat due to the fact that the SCADA systems change over time. Therefore,

The threat of cyber –attack is not only likely to target the military and government institutions but also poses a potential risk to private companies as well. The major private firms that are potentially at high risk of being attacked are the private companies that are given the functions of monitoring critical infrastructure particularly in the United States and the telecommunications sector is one of those industries that lies within the mercies of cyber criminals. Communications in any country is considered a very crucial and important infrastructure that is necessary to efficient and effective relay of information within the country, this is so because in a situation where disaster strikes, keeping communication lines open is very crucial in order to coordinate activities appropriately. This case study is based on a telecommunications company where information is derived from an interview with an Information Security Analyst.