Reposted from ABC 4 News

Released surveillance video shows vandals destroying an outdoor exhibit at the Charleston Children’s Museum of the Lowcountry (CML) overnight Friday, according to the Charleston Police Department.

Security footage provided by the museum shows three white males in their early to mid-20s destroying an outdoor exhibit in the museum's yard.

The police report states the damage estimate was $500. Museum staff updated that figure to $16,000 with the labor cost to replace the exhibit.

The damage was found Saturday at 8:15 a.m.

The museum wants to press charges, according to a police report.

Anyone with information is asked to call 843-743-7200 and ask for the on-duty Charleston Police Department central detective.

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Reposted from Security Management

​"I've been doing this close to 40 years, and there has not, in my career, been a hurricane season anything like this," disaster response expert Jerome Hauer explains in a recent interview regarding the unprecedented 2017 Atlantic hurricane season.  

Given his experience base, that is saying something. Hauer has led the homeland security and emergency services department for the state of New York, the office of emergency management in New York City, and Indiana's department of emergency management. On the federal level, he has served as assistant secretary for the U.S. Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness (OPHEP). He is also a longtime member of ASIS International, and is now a professor at Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies.

But despite all those years in the field, Hauer cannot recall a storm season like the one that just passed. Starting with Hurricane Franklin and ending with Hurricane Ophelia, the 2017 season featured 10 consecutive hurricanes—the greatest number in the satellite era, all of which were marked by winds of at least 75 miles per hour. It may also have been the costliest season on record, with a preliminary total of more than $186 billion in damages, nearly all of which resulted from the three most devastating hurricanes: Harvey, Irma, and Maria.

Each of these massive hurricanes had its own profile. Harvey, for example, came with flooding of biblical proportions, and Irma devastated portions of Florida's power grid. Experts like Hauer say that these two hurricanes illustrated some lessons for emergency preparedness and response. (Experts interviewed for this article did not focus on Hurricane Maria, because the response to that storm was complicated by political and geographic factors.)

For example, while emergency management leaders in localities and states understand the importance of planning, they do not have the time nor resources to plan for every possible scenario, and so they normally do not plan for the unprecedented—such as three Category 4 hurricanes that make landfall within the span of four weeks.

"This many hurricanes that impact the United States and its territories in a single year is something that you couldn't contemplate," Hauer says. "Particularly since the hurricanes were catastrophic. The strength of the hurricanes, the volume of rain in some areas—we haven't seen anything like this that I can remember."

And even if a sole visionary emergency manager formulated a plan to protect all affected places from an unprecedented hurricane season, in the real world no jurisdiction or state government would have the billions needed to actually implement and fund the required costs of reinforcing, rebuilding, or replacing the various infrastructure systems that would be affected, says emergency management expert Harry Rhulen. Rhulen is CEO of the crisis management firm Firestorm and a member of the ASIS International Crisis Management and Business Continuity Council.

Nonetheless, the series of devastating hurricanes did illustrate another emergency management lesson, Rhulen says: proper disaster preparedness and response means planning for multiple disasters, not just one. "It's one of the most important things to account for—when you are doing business continuity and disaster planning, in general, you should assume multiple events," Rhulen says. 

Indeed, Hauer says that's a critical element of disaster response management—planning for the potential second- and third-level disasters. "We did that on a regular basis, both when I was in federal government and on the city level," Hauer says. "You can't just say we have flooding, and say how you deal with the flooding, but also how you will deal with the secondary effects, such as the health effects."

For example, during Hurricane Sandy, mosquitoes used overflowing reservoirs as a breeding ground, running the risk of the spread of West Nile virus. Similarly, after Hurricane Harvey, flooding in Houston raised the risk of health issues stemming from human contact with floodwater, which can harbor bacteria, viruses, and fungi.

Potential health risks like this mean that environmental experts from groups like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should be "part of the process" in disaster preparation, Hauer says. It is also important that hospitals take seriously the requirement to hold emergency exercises and drills. "Some take it seriously, but some don't, and they just go through the motions," he explains. And whether it be a locality or a state, drills by emergency personnel should be critiqued by elected officials who should ask some "tough questions" afterward, he adds. 

Another challenge in dealing with cascading disasters is that "the first crisis lowers your ability to perform all of the functions that you normally perform," Rhulen says. For example, a fire that destroys some computer hardware can hinder a company's efforts to protect itself from cyberattacks. And storm damage can increase vulnerability to thievery or other types of criminal activity. "You automatically have to bump up security," Rhulen says.

In addition, resources are finite, so in the case of responding to Hurricane Harvey's effects in Texas, "it stretches resources to the point where you are way behind, and near the breaking point," Rhulen explains. This could hamper the response to any disaster that happens in the near future. "It makes their overall exposure for the next year go up dramatically," he says.  

Given that government resources were stretched thin by the double blow of Harvey and Irma, the active volunteer response during the storms was especially critical and "really impressive," Rhulen says. These volunteers, ranging in scope from formal groups to neighbors helping neighbors, beefed up a responder workforce that would have been inadequate without them. "People need to understand—you're really your own first responder," he says. 

In the future, the unprecedented hurricane season of 2017 may be looked upon for another historically significant feature. It elicited an unusual type of response—and one that may serve as a closely watched model of resiliency planning in the future—by the island nation of Dominica.

Maria was the worst natural disaster in the country's recorded history. With sustained winds of nearly 160 miles per hour, the storm made landfall on September 19, 2017, as a Category 5 hurricane, forcing the majority of the country's 72,000 residents into homelessness and leaving the island without communication for more than 30 hours. More than 90 percent of the population was left without food, power, or shelter.

In the wake of this devastation, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said that he does not want to build on old vulnerabilities, but instead develop a targeted resilience strategy so that Dominica becomes the first "climate resilient" nation. "Our desire [is] to be the captains of our fate, and to choose the shape of our recovery," Skerrit said in a statement after the storm. 

To do so, Dominica would have to rebuild so that its infrastructure could withstand the type of extreme weather events that may become more common due to climate change. Exactly how the country would do that, and how it could fund such an undertaking, is not yet clear. But Dominican officials are appealing to global organizations for future assistance, and they say that they may have some international partners in their venture.

"The World Bank and European Development Agency have pledged considerable sums to back our vision as the first climate resilient nation of the climate change era," Skerrit said in a recent address to the United Nations General Assembly. "To deny climate change is to procrastinate while the earth sinks." ​ ​

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Reposted from Sputnik News

Liverpool-native Lee Furlong and Canadian Brittney Schneider were arrested after spray painting "Scougge Lee" across the Tha Phae Gate in Chiang Mai. If convicted, the pair could face up to 10 years in prison and a one million baht (£23,000) fine.

Furlong and Schneider, both age 23, were detained at the Mad Monkey Guesthouse after outraged locals shared social media footage of them defacing the 13th-century artifact early Thursday morning. 

Due to Furlong's intoxication, he allegedly meant to say "Scouser Lee", referring to people hailing from Liverpool. Schneider topped off the crude street art by spraying her first initial "B" below. 

After authorities detained the pair, Furlong allegedly said he found the spray paint in the street, adding he did not know it was against the law to vandalize the wall and that his vandalism was a form of "artistic expression". 

The two were filmed around 4 am from a CCTV camera near a coffee shop tagging the red brick wall before wandering off after failing to hire a tuk-tuk. The footage of their early-morning adventure went viral on Facebook. 

The pair were paraded before journalists as they reenacted their crime for police on Friday, with local workers scrubbing off the fine art shortly afterwards. 

Westerners have made headlines for similar offenses after the FBI Art Crime division tracked down Michael Rohana, 24, who snapped a selfie with a 2,200-year-old terracotta warrior on display at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and then snapped off the ancient relic's thumb as a souvenir.  

The incident infuriated officials from the Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Center who said they were "shocked and outraged" and called for "exemplary punishment".  

The incident had taken place during an Ugly Sweater Christmas party, but museum employees failed to report the incident until January 8. Rohana was charged on three counts and released on $15,000 bail.

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Reposted from ABC News

In a startling disclosure, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday that agents are conducting thousands of terror investigations around the world.

"Right now, as I sit here, we're currently investigating about 5,000 terrorism cases across America and around the world and about a thousand of those cases are homegrown violent extremists and they are in all 50 states," Wray said in his prepared testimony.

He said the threat of a large scale, big city attack still exists from groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS but homegrown violence is as prevalent as ever. 

"National security remains the FBI's top priority and counter-terrorism is still a paramount concern but that threat has changed significantly since 9/11," Wray said.

Wray said that homegrown terrorists (HVE) "self radicalize" at home and are influenced on social media by the global jihadist movement. They can also attack at a moment's notice.

"This HVE threat has created a whole new set of challenges with a much greater number, much greater volume of threats and each one of them with far fewer dots to connect and much less time to interrupt an attack," Wray continued.

Russell Travers, the acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, also testified at the hearing, saying the U.S. has "almost 20 ISIS branches of networks ranging from hundreds to thousands of individuals around the globe."

"Our terrorist identities database has expanded by well over an order of magnitude since 2003," he added.

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Reposted from MidHudson News

An eight-year-old boy was arrested and charged by the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office with damaging the museum at Swan Lake Park in the Town of Liberty.

Old photographs had been ripped off the walls, a billboard had been knocked over and a visitors’ log had been scribbled in. A fire was also started that caused damage to a gazebo.

The vandalism was reported on Thursday, September 20 at about 4:30 p.m. Investigation by the sheriff’s Youth Division led to the arrest of the child on Wednesday, October 10.

The boy admitted to causing the damage to the museum and told deputies that when the first fire went out, he returned to the location and started a second fire. He was charged with two counts each of arson and criminal mischief, both misdemeanors and was released to the custody of a parent and ordered to appear in Sullivan County Family Court.

Deputies were assisted by Liberty Village Police.

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Reposted from The Columbia Chronicle

The Annual Security and Fire Safety Report for 2017 was released Oct. 1, showing an overall decrease in the majority of  reported incidents.

The Annual Security and Fire Safety Report is issued by the college in compliance with the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, as amended by the Violence Against Women Reauthorization of 2013. The reporting period is Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2017.

The report showed decreases in the following areas: burglary, domestic violence, dating violence and rape. 

However, the report showed an increase in some categories including: fondling cases, from four to seven, on campus property and student housing; an increase in robberies from five to 10 on public property; and an increase in aggravated assault from zero to two on campus and zero to one in on-campus housing.

Ronald Sodini, associate vice president for Campus Safety and Security, said a possible reason for the increases in fondling could be that more victims are comfortable coming  forward.

Sodini said the increase in robberies occurred in public spaces instead of on campus property, therefore some reports were made by the general public and not necessarily Columbia students. 

“We know that in 2017,  as a whole, there was a general increase in crime in the area, and we’re not immune to that—we’re part of the city,” Sodini said. “But relatively speaking, when you compare our area to the [entire] city, we’re in one of the safest areas. So the city is seeing decreases in crime and we’re hopeful that we’ll see those as well.”

Junior cinema art and science major and President of Student Government Association Jazmin Bryant said she’s seen campus security improve a lot over the years, particularly with the added blue light emergency system and new addition of the Security Escort Program.

The Security Escort Program was implemented during the summer to provide students with escorts from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. seven days a week during the Fall and Spring semesters. It officially started Sept. 4, 2018. Students can be escorted to various CTA train stations as well as select Metro stations in the Loop.

“If you have the Columbia app, they have a new section where the escort program is on there, there’s fire safety notifications [as well as] safety alerts,” Bryant said. “Students have 24-hour access to those types of opportunities.”

The college could improve its security outreach by updating its website to be more user-friendly, she added. The project is currently underway with updated videos, and separately, there has been an inclusion of safety alerts on the Columbia app to keep students aware of incidents on campus, she added.

“A cool tip for me is just always [to make sure] someone knows where you are, whether it’s a roommate, a family friend, or someone from class,” Bryant said. “Just making sure you’re always communicating and you’re never by yourself late at night.”

Freshman photography major Julia Sudie said overall, she feels a sense of safety  on campus.

“It feels like a very safe place, I’ve never felt like I’m not safe,” Sudie said.  “Even if it’s super busy or it’s super barren, there’s always someone there who has your back.”

Sudie, who is a commuter, said she does wish there were security guards placed at train stations near campus as added security measures that would ensure safety.

“It just gives you that sense of comfort that there’s someone there since it is bigger and downtown,” Sudie said.

Sodini said he does believe the new safety measures  have allowed the reports to decrease.

“We believe that those are wise investments, and that they’re the right thing to do to help make our community safer,” Sodini said.

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Reposted from Security Magazine

According to a survey of more than 1,000 U.S. office workers, traditional access control methods are costly and becoming more vulnerable by the minute.

The survey, commissioned by NexKey, found that nearly 60 percent of people surveyed would prefer to use their smartphones to access spaces over more traditional methods such as keys or cards.

Those traditional methods have been proved vulnerable in modern workplaces; 17 percent of respondents said an ex-coworker or employee has stolen from their workplace using their old key, and more than a quarter of respondents have had to replace their locks within the last year because an employee lost their key or failed to return it. Of respondents who had to replace their locks, 25 percent said they had to do so four to six times in the last year.

As workplaces shift towards more open, fluid, coworking atmospheres, access management must evolve, and quickly. Forty-four percent of coworking tenants use traditional keys to access their space, and this group is nearly four times as likely (32 percent compared to 8 percent) to experience theft from an ex-coworker or employee as non-coworking tenants.

Coworking spaces are extremely popular with millennials in particular (68 percent of coworking tenants are millennials), and two-thirds of coworking tenants in this age group are interested in unlocking doors with smartphones over traditional methods.

The survey also found that:

• Almost 40 percent of millennials have duplicated a do-not-duplicate key.
• Three-fourths of respondents have lost or misplaced their keys.
• Around a third of respondents have needed to grant someone access to their office building from a remote location.

Reposted from UNM Newsroom

Campus safety at The University of New Mexico is an issue most everyone’s minds as the greater Albuquerque-area continues to grapple with crime in general. In compliance with the federal Clery Act, the UNM Police Department publishes annually the Campus Security and Fire Safety Report.

The report contains crime statistics and other safety information for the calendar year 2017 using comparisons of the previous two years and offers a glimpse into overall crime issues as they pertain to the campus community specifically. It provides law enforcement officials with an opportunity to review crimes that have occurred on campus and trends that might be associated with them with the ultimate goal of preventing future incidences through the implementation of new safety initiatives and programs designed to improve the safety of one and all on campus.

The recently released report for 2018 includes areas where UNM experienced a slight increase in crime as well as areas where reported crimes decreased. Several factors can affect yearly statistics including changes in reporting criteria that have led to the slight increases in certain categories and decreases in others.

A review of the statistics from 2017 show an increase in auto thefts with 222 compared with 174 in 2016, burglaries with 39 reported, up from 28 in 2016 and 29 reported dating violence incidents compared to 23 in 2016. However, reports of domestic violence dropped to six reported incidents in 2017 compared to 11 in 2016.

UNM officials attribute the increases that reflect modifications in the reporting of auto thefts and incidents of domestic violence in which dating violence was added as a reporting requirement. Clery also requires attempted auto thefts to be reported as auto thefts whether the vehicle was taken or not.

It’s still an issue taken very seriously. Campus safety, including property crime, quickly became a prime initiative for new UNM President Garnett Stokes.

“President Stokes has made campus safety one of her top initiatives and in doing so has secured funding to increase lighting and cameras around campus,” said UNM Police Chief Kevin McCabe. “We believe adding the cameras will aid law enforcement in apprehending offenders and make the campus a less attractive target for property thefts and other crimes of opportunity.”

In other categories, aggravated assaults were up by seven (19), reported rape incidents were up by four (19) and fondling cases by one (12).

Initiatives such as LoboRESPECT, facilitated through the Lobo Respect Advocacy Center, continues to educate the campus on healthy interpersonal relationships and behaviors. The University credits this program and others such as Think About It, a new education and mandatory training program for students rolled out earlier this year by the Lobo Respect Advocacy Center.

UNM officials hope these initiatives and others lead to an increase in proper reporting of sexual assault cases. Last year, the University was able to reach more than 25,000 students with its in-person sexual assault prevention program, The Grey Area.

UNM PD also recently launched a new crime-fighting initiative of its own titled #UNMStrongerTogether designed to encourage more awareness of and participation in community policing on all UNM campuses.

“We have 40 sworn officers on our force, from the Chief to patrol officers,” said McCabe. “Those officers patrol UNM’s nearly 800-acre campus 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That’s a lot of ground to cover, right in the heart of Albuquerque. UNMPD is dedicated to taking proactive measures to increase the safety of our community, and we hope the community will help support that mission.”

As part of the report, the UNM Police Department requests crime statistics information from the City of Albuquerque, Rio Rancho and Bernalillo Police Departments to include. The complete report also includes information about crime prevention programs, ways to report criminal activity, and campus policies on sexual assault, drug, alcohol and weapons.

In accordance with the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, the annual report additionally includes details on fire statistics and fire safety information for UNM Student Residential Facilities as well as the University’s policy and procedures for resident students to provide a contact person in case a student is determined to be missing.

The full report is available on the UNM PD website or interested parties can request a copy at the UNM Police Department located in Hokona Hall at 2500 Campus Blvd., Human Resources Service Center at 1700 Lomas Blvd., Admissions Office at the Student Services Center, Student Support and Services Center at 1155 University Blvd. and the HSC Administrative Services Office at the Health Sciences and Services Building.

In a letter to the campus community about the report results, McCabe said, “The UNM Police Department is working hard to make this campus a safe place to live, learn, work and play. We believe that the information in the UNM Annual Security and Fire Safety Report for 2018 is informative and helpful. We hope you will take the time to review it and help us work to keep the campus safe.”

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Reposted from Xinhuanet

Over 1,000 companies and organisations in Britain have signed up for new counter terrorism training course, the National Counter Terrorism Security Office said Wednesday.

Since the innovative training product was first made available, organisations as varied as high-street department store chain John Lewis & Partners, the English National Opera and Manchester Cathedral have enrolled their staff. The training scheme is a measure that could help prevent terror attacks.

Called ACT (Action Counters terrorism) Awareness e-Learning, the training was developed in a ground-breaking partnership between Counter Terrorism Policing and British retail giant Marks & Spencer. It covers how to spot the signs of suspicious behavior and what to do if an attack should take place.

The course can be divided into short sections to suit business needs. However, it takes just one hour in total to complete -- an hour that could save lives.

Deputy Assistant Police Commissioner Lucy D'Orsi, national police lead for protective security, said: "All staff working in crowded places -- not just those who have a security role -- can follow the course and be in a stronger position to help protect themselves, colleagues and the public.

"Our officers will still be available to deal with companies on a one-to-one level but this will lead to many more 'eyes and ears' available to help us that could potentially save lives." 

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Reposted from BetaNews

A survey of more than 400 full-time employees in the US shows that, despite having a general understanding of security risks, people still tend towards unsafe behavior.

The study by Spanning Cloud Apps finds many are under-prepared for the increasing sophistication and instance of ransomware and phishing attacks. More than half (55 percent) admit to clicking links they don't recognize, 59 percent say they would allow a colleague to use their work computer and 34 percent are unable to identify an insecure eCommerce site.

Recognition of of unfamiliar URLs from popular sites like Facebook and the New York Times, along with aversion towards potential malicious links, such as bit.ly, is generally high, with 87 percent of respondents demonstrating caution around these URLs. However, 13 percent of employees still do click on short URLs.

More than 52 percent of all employees and 62 percent of admin holders polled say they shop online from their work computer. But when presented with an example of an insecure eCommerce browser window, only 34 percent of employees responded that they felt the site was secure. Under half (49 percent) of all employees polled who indicated the site was insecure were able to correctly identify a broken padlock as being the key indicator of an unsafe site. In addition only 36 percent of all employees correctly identified a suspicious link as being the key indicator of a phishing email.

"While we are encouraged to see that employees are becoming more risk averse, and most can identify unsecure sites or phishing emails, these results show that there is still a concerning gap between what users say they understand and how they actually behave," says Mat Hamlin, VP of Products at Spanning.

 "Organizations need to improve security awareness and training while still preparing for the worst, which is why backup of all critical data, including SaaS, is more important than ever, especially considering that 25 percent of these survey respondents indicated they have lost data in G Suite or Microsoft Office 365 in the past."

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