Reposted from Visalia Times-Delta

In a matter of 15 minutes, a group of vandals created a path of destruction through Tulare County's museum at Mooney Grove Park. 

Police are searching for the suspects who caused more than $5,000 in damage and days of clean up. The museums inside the park shuttered over the weekend to allow crews to secure doors, sweep glass and help police find the vandals. 

"We're greatly disappointed in this," said Mike Chrisman, president of Tulare County Historical Society. "We want folks to know we appreciate their support of the historical society, but activities like this are totally unacceptable in today's society." 

A burglar alarm sounded just after 8:30 p.m. on Friday and sent Visalia officers from across the city to the park on the southern tip of Visalia.  

Officers arrived and found someone had smashed windows and kicked in doors to the main museum. Police said the person entered the museum and continued to smash several glass display cases. 

The vandals then turned their attention to the village.

They damaged the Surprise School, Emken House, Record Building and Main Street Gallery. A reunion was held earlier this month to celebrate students who attended Surprise School.

The school was used through 1962.

The Tulare County Farm Labor and Agriculture Museum was untouched. While it's believed no items were taken, it could be a while before that's set in stone Clean up could take weeks or even months.

In the last several years, the museum had gotten a technological boost, though. A new security system armed with more than a dozen cameras could help police identify the people responsible.

Museum Curator Amy King said the museums have been vandalized in the past but no one has ever been arrested. Vandals have never gone to this extent, either.

Mooney Grove Park is among Tulare County’s most visited parks, according to Tulare County Treasure officials. The park not only preserves a slice of Tulare County’s past, it's home to one of the last Valley oak forests.

The museum houses one of the largest Native American basket collections in California as well as artifacts of the pioneer era, agriculture equipment, and restored homes, schools and buildings.

Those who wish to donate to the historical society's Museum Restoration Fund, which will be used to cover the cost of damages, can click here. 

Property Crimes Unit detectives are using clues gathered Friday night, but anyone with information is urged to call the Anonymous Tip-Line at 713-4738.

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Reposted from Australian Associated Press

A rail museum in the NSW Hunter region has sustained an estimated million dollars worth of bushfire damage.

A woman has escaped with her life, trapped inside a building as a bushfire ripped through an historic rail museum in the NSW Hunter Valley.

Volunteers at the Richmond Vale Train Museum near Cessnock are counting their blessings after Wednesday's blaze reduced several irreplaceable exhibits to ashes but spared the life of their colleague.

"Our secretary was here on site, she was actually in the museum building as the fire came through. Basically it passed both sides of her but she is alright, she survived," museum chairman Peter Meddows told AAP on Thursday.

"She said she didn't think about it at the time, that it bothers her now more than it did then."

Caught in the path of the ferocious bushfire, the museum lost two kilometres of railway line as well as a number of restored historical trains and a coal hopper from 1880.

The final damage bill is expected to hit the $1 million mark.

The Richmond Vale bushfire that took off on Wednesday during an unseasonably hot day burnt more than 870 hectares, the Rural Fire Service said on Thursday.

"It's heartbreaking, you've got a program and you're working through it and you're achieving your goals, it's 38 years of work and we are slowly getting there and then you get this setback," Mr Meddows told AAP.

"We are all pretty dejected but we're determined to keep going."

Mr Meddows said the team was already working out how to recover from the loss.

"In a couple of weeks time we've got our family fun festival which is one of our major fundraising events so we've got to have something on for that," he said.

See Original Post

by Jerry Brennan of SMR Security Management Resources

For many years SMR has been tracking the trend of security management jobs either eliminated or outsourced. Without question, those who constructed preparedness plans for their career fared the best when they found themselves without a job. Here is what you should consider in advance that will help you build an effective job search strategy should the need arise.

 Be Clear About Your Desired Profession
Many people find themselves in jobs and careers by default or happenstance. The clearer you are on the profession that you want to be in, the more effective your job search strategy will be.

* Analyze the security management profession, the types of positions and the direction that security programs are heading within different industry segments. Talk to your peers and reach out to others whom you view as leaders in your field.

* Gather information by networking with and gleaning information from non-security managers from both in and outside of your organization. They are your customers and the success of a security professional within any organization is directly related their perception of your value.

 * Assess whether you are in the right profession for your interests and if there is an alignment with the current job market.

Determine Your Career Goals
What is your ideal job? Developing a clear and concise objective will help you develop a focused search plan.

* Today's security job market is highly competitive. Organizations are looking for technically qualified candidates whom will fit with their culture. They are also looking for professionals who have a clear vision of where they are going.

* A job search is time consuming. A clear objective lets you direct your energies at the opportunities that best fit your aspirations.

 Perform a Self-Assessment
A self-assessment gets you back in touch with the product you are selling: you! The self-assessment process provides the groundwork for a solid resume or CV.

* Create a list of all that you offer an organization. Identify your skills, capabilities, knowledge and areas of expertise. List of every major accomplishment and resulting impact. Once you have finished this, set it aside, wait a day or two, and then go back over everything.

* Ask colleagues and professional acquaintances for an honest assessment of your strengths. They may mention some valuable qualities that you have overlooked.

* Organize your professional qualities into general categories, such as leadership, management, organizational development and technical. These categories can be subdivided into areas that best reflect what you see in a job description or position specification for your target position.

Be Ready to Pitch
Your previous job title might get you a phone call from a recruiter, but if you can't articulate your capabilities, your background and what you've accomplished, you're not likely to get invited for an interview.

* Develop a clear, concise statement that you can use to summarize who you are and what you do. This can also be used as a summary at the top of your resume or CV. Keep your target audience in mind and speak to their needs and interests.

* Second, develop an exit statement. You're going to be asked why you left your last position. Be prepared to explain with no hesitation.

* Next, write a one-page professional background summary. This summary can help you to develop cover letters as well as present key points in initial screening calls. Your story should be compelling and reflect continued growth in your career.

* Earlier this year SMR outlined 7 key points to consider when creating your CV. Your final step is to create your go-to resume and have it immediately available when opportunities arise.

Take these steps and you will be in a good position to react to any changes, initiated by you or otherwise, in your security management career.

Got to SMR website

Reposted from ArtGuard

A Willem DeKooning painting was recently discovered among items in a small and insignificant estate sale in Arizona.  (NY Times: de Kooning Found) The piece went missing from a museum at the University of Arizona in 1985 and very quickly left a cold trail. It now seems likely it was stolen by a couple named Jerome and Rita Alter, both deceased, but the evidence is still circumstantial.

The interesting thing about the case is that from what is known it appears that at no time was there ever an attempt to sell the painting. No ransom was ever sought. No one claims to have had information stemming from any indiscreet conversations by the couple. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that the Alters, both of whom had strong interests in the arts, likely took it for their own personal and very private enjoyment. It was purported to have been seen behind a door in the corner of their bedroom by someone who had no idea who the painter was.

This certainly places a dubious status on the whereabouts of potentially thousands of pieces of stolen art and artifacts. We know perpetrators wait for an opportunity to sell stolen works or the right occasion to leverage them for some legal gain or reveal themselves in some careless way. But how many of the stolen works are just objects of affection, either in the possession of the thief or someone who commissioned the theft, and carefully concealed.

I return to a refrain and a reminder that contrary to the remarks – and maybe even deep rooted belief – by some that stealing high value art is a fool’s game because it can’t be sold without someone in the art world being alert to the transaction. It completely discounts the idea of emotional and aesthetic appreciation of art, the very thing we go to museums and galleries to satisfy. This may surprise anyone caught up in the wildly inflationary art market where high-end pieces are bought one day and sold a short time later simply for financial gain.

 Yes, there are people who would go to great lengths to own a piece of art that they would be quite satisfied to enjoy themselves, alone, resisting any urge to satisfy their ego by letting the world know they won this prize. This may be one of the best arguments for securing art against disappearance.

www.artguard.net

September 5, 2017 - Trent, Staffordshire 

SecurTest, Inc. has been named the number one international background screening company due to its triple patented iReviewNow System.

As the Number 1 Rated Background Screening Provider, Steven C. Millwee, CPP, CEO and President said, “Our exclusive iReviewNow patents, dedicated staff, commitment to accuracy, outstanding customer service, compliance, and loyal customers have made us the de facto standard.”

"As the only patented solution, no other background screening provider can create an automated, online, or email consumer reporting and dispute resolution system. Consumers or subjects of their background report receive an automated text and email alert when the report lands at iReviewNow.com. Subjects securely login, authenticate their identity, and then review the entire report to ensure it is accurate", according to Millwee.

Millwee is the inventor of the patented iReviewNow system. iReviewNow allows consumers unprecedented real-time access to their reports and the ability to dispute inaccuracies before adverse action can be taken. This revolutionary compliance system is setting the new standard in the background screening industry. To learn more about SecurTest or to sign your organization up for iReviewNow, please visit www.securtest.com Transparent The patented iReviewNow system is fully FCRA compliant: and the only system that sends the consumer a copy of his or her background report — pass or fail — simultaneous to when the employer is notified of its completion. Accurate When consumers fail their background check, they are able to see exactly what has been found on their record. They can then dispute any inaccuracies or misidentification of criminal records securely online. Reliable When employers have the 360-degree view of the candidate, they can make a fully informed hiring decision. To learn more about iReviewNow go to www.securtest.com or www.ireviewnow.com.

Reposted from asisonline.org

​On July 12, 2006, fighting between the Israeli army and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah suddenly erupted and started to spread. Hezbollah fired rockets and anti-tank missiles; Israel responded with airstrikes and artillery fire, and later launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. The 2006 Lebanon War raged on for 34 days before the United Nations brokered a ceasefire.

I received word of the fighting shortly before the news reports hit. I was GE’s divisional global security director at the time, based at the corporate headquarters building of General Electric (GE) Healthcare in Waukesha, Wisconsin. I was responsible for the security and wellbeing of employees at more than 600 properties around the world, including three sites in Israel and one in Lebanon. Calls were coming in from both sides of the battle; many employees were at risk of losing their lives. 

However, as the war entered its tenth day, we had relocated more than 1,000 employees and family members out of harm’s way, with the help of our corporate executive team and several strategic partners. This wasn’t an easy task. We were able to continue basic operations with minimal losses in Israel, but all activity in Lebanon came to an abrupt stop. What further complicated matters was the U.S. government’s refusal, or inability, to assist with any form of safe passage from Lebanon. Still, we were able to complete relocations by using several dangerously remote and unpopulated routes to reach Jordan through Syria.  

An event of this magnitude—an actual war—is difficult to navigate, and can be wholly draining. While the war crisis proceeded, the company continued to operate, so long hours were a requirement. For three days after that first call, I didn’t get many chances to sleep.

Managing a serious crisis as a group leader can be stressful, both physically and emotionally. It is crucial to recognize that your effectiveness in successfully leading others will diminish if you openly demonstrate indecisiveness, emotional frailty, and operational ignorance during the event.

But it is also important to realize that crisis leadership begins long before the actual crisis occurs. The right preparation is essential for being an effective crisis leader, and for a security executive this groundwork can start from day one on the job. By focusing on preparation, and by consistently practicing certain management best practices, managers can greatly improve their chances of being an effective crisis leader. This article explores these practices and preparation, including building technical expertise, assessing situations, developing relationships with key stakeholders, and training for emergencies. 

BUILD EXPERTISE

Knowing the business you support is the most critical factor to your success as a crisis management leader. Thus, if you’re new to an organization, you should dedicate as much time as possible in your first three months to learning all you can about every facet of the business—from sales to production to market share—and meeting the people who are the driving forces in those areas. 

In my career, I have had the opportunity to manage security programs for several companies in completely different vertical markets. Each market change required extended study time. There’s a huge variance in the operational methodologies of security programs at a hospital and a nuclear power plant, for example. Although the core principles of security can be applied to any industry, each line of business retains its own unique characteristics and regulatory framework.  

Besides operational knowledge, you must also develop relationships with most of the key process and resource owners who support the business’s primary missions. Once those relationships are established, you should then strive to understand the secondary and tertiary levels of operations, resources, and personnel necessary to keep the business going.

In addition, you should also learn some basic business continuity planning skills and conduct a few business impact assessments. These will allow you a fuller understanding of the potential vulnerabilities and the gaps that may exist in business operations, the contingency plans themselves, and the resource base that will be available when a crisis occurs. 

However, conducting a business impact assessment of your company can be a daunting task if you attempt to assess the whole business in a single review. And it can be almost impossible to complete without the full cooperation of nearly everyone in your company. Instead, consider focusing on key revenue streams, products or services that define the company, and significant vulnerabilities that could interrupt these streams and services—such as the sudden loss of a single-sourced major component, a labor disruption, or a stoppage in distribution channels. Even if the assessment seems to have little to do with traditional security activities, it is a great way to learn about the inner workings of your company.  

For example, after the Great Tohoku Earthquake struck Japan on March 11, 2011, I was working as a security manager at Paramount Pictures. Due to the earthquake, almost all of the film industry’s specialized magnetic recording and video storage tape became unavailable. Sony, with its entire tape manufacturing business located in Japan, was the exclusive maker of such tape, and its production stopped cold. 

This was a supply chain crisis for sure, and we at Paramount were scrambling for tapes. Fortunately, our security team had enough operational and business continuity knowledge to know where to look and who to call. By volunteering to help secure tapes for the many television productions on the lot, our team knew where to find hundreds of new and reusable tapes in dozens of secure storage locations. It was like an Easter egg hunt gone wild. Armed with this knowledge and with very little effort, the security department was able to secure dozens of the remaining tapes, which kept our production teams going until other recording methods were found.

Sometimes, it takes great effort to avoid being constrained into a departmental silo and stuck in the dark when it comes to internal business workings. But the effort is worth it. Get out there and mingle, don’t be afraid to ask questions and build relationships and alliances. Learn the business so you can contribute to its survival.    ​

ASSESS SITUATIONS

Another important component of crisis leadership preparation is staying current on domestic and international events, especially if your company is a global one. Third-party providers of intelligence and communications services can be useful here. Many of these providers even offer crisis forecasting by region and country to keep your team abreast of problem areas.  

This global understanding, combined with business knowledge, will allow you to see the big picture and anticipate which operations might be interrupted if a crisis starts to unfold.  

Moreover, demonstrating this knowledge improves your chances of being part of the inner circle at your business. For example, as a matter of practice, GE security leaders routinely gathered for periodic operational continuity development sessions. In these meetings, we shared intelligence derived from in-country leaders, paid global intelligence services, and geopolitical analysts. At the first signs of trouble—what we called “a smoldering issue”—the affected business units were identified, and key revenue processes were analyzed for potential impacts and vulnerabilities. 

Often, a smoldering issue has the potential to challenge several exposed operational and distribution channels, and the material or human resources they contain. Thus, effective coordination and communication is critical during these initial stages. 

DEVELOP RELATIONSHIPS

With sufficient business knowledge and a global understanding, you will be in a position to advise the C-suite on events once a crisis starts to unfold and help your firm be active rather than reactive.  

However, this cannot happen if organizational leaders reject an inclusionary approach when it comes to crisis leadership. For example, early in my career, the company I worked for decided to move forward on a major acquisition—the purchase of a competitor’s remanufacturing division. In general, not all security departments are included in every C-suite function; some do not get much visibility into major corporate decisions. This held true in our particular case because the security team was not part of the company’s diligence support team. Furthermore, the security team was not included in the company’s crisis response team, which consisted mostly of legal and financial leadership, supported by communications and customer relations staff.

As a result, the security team was unable to flag any discrepancies that might have shown up in the due diligence process. The division that was purchased turned out to be a fraudulent shell company. When news of the bad purchase reached the press a few days later, our firm suffered a severe financial loss and some reputational damage to its brand.

The incident illustrates the im­por­tance of maintaining a wide representation of all business functions on a crisis management team. By emphasizing teamwork and relationship building, a manager can help develop and maintain collaborative channels that will be invaluable during a crisis. Moreover, a well-structured and collaborative crisis management team can incorporate the use of predictive tools, such as event forecasting and analysis, that maximize the chances of avoiding a crisis in the first place.  

Even so, if a crisis does occur, successful collaboration between many stakeholders is usually a prerequisite for formulating an acceptable and viable solution. An effective crisis management leader knows where to go to seek out advice from others when considering options to present to company leaders. While it is often necessary to quickly provide solution options during a crisis, it is also advisable for managers to carefully consider all security-based spending decisions, which can sometimes be driven more by fear than by reason after a major event

Once options have been considered and a response plan is approved, a manager needs strong interactive leadership skills to ensure that others buy in and follow the course laid out. As the example of the shell company purchase shows, a collaborative effort can be quickly derailed by preventing a single department, which might hold a critical part of the solution, from participating.  

TRAIN

Good leaders make intelligent decisions; great leaders do so consistently. The combination of business operations knowledge and current event understanding will help a security leader make better decisions. 

But in the final analysis, leadership is not about making the best decision possible in every instance, or about always being the smartest person in the room. It’s ultimately about your ability to earn the trust of others to the point where they will willingly follow you. Here, effective communication is vital. 

In July 2005, four suicide bombers armed with rucksacks full of explosives detonated bombs on the London Underground that killed 52 people and injured hundreds more. Within four hours of the bombings, our security team at GE Healthcare was able to quickly identify—from a pool of roughly 45,000 employees —that 483 were confirmed or expected to be traveling in or about London that day for work. Using our mass communication system, we located all but nine employees on business travel that were in London or had passed through London within an eight-hour window of the bombings.

  By other means, we quickly confirmed that the remaining nine travelers were safe. Additionally, some of our employees on personal leave and vacation were traveling in London that day. Because those employees had included their private cell phone numbers in the company’s emergency notification system, we were able to receive confirmations that they, too, were safe.  

On the other hand, sometimes crisis pressure can lead to costly communication errors. Take for example, one of the most high-profile crisis situations in recent memory, the 9/11 terrorist attacks. After the planes hit the towers, one senior security manager of a major corporation in New York was overheard saying, “We’re being attacked!  I don’t think anyone’s gonna make it out of Manhattan!” The comment started a panic in the entire office building, which took hours to calm.  

The example shows that even accomplished managers can succumb to pressure. However, specialized crisis management leadership training can be invaluable in reducing the chances of this happening. Communication is often an important component of this type of training; many programs provide guidance on how bad news can be communicated without embellishment, panic, or fear, and how correct communication can provide stability and hope by demonstrating a confident resolve—indicating that something is being done immediately, or will be in the near future.

 In addition, crisis training helps managers better understand the anatomy of a crisis, which is an essential element in remaining rational and functioning calmly. Drills can help build response memory, which in turn helps a leader avoid freezing or panicking. 

In cases where in-house crisis training is unavailable, security managers should consider building their own training. With a little research online about crisis management planning, managers can first assemble the basics: contact sheets, resource directories, contingency plans, meeting schedules, and organizational charts. Then, with help from both the legal and human resource departments, the manager can coordinate partnerships with local emergency service and communication providers, and design some crisis training exercises. 

Becoming skilled at anything takes practice, and crisis management leadership is no exception. If you ever find yourself in a room filled with managers trying to solve a major problem, don’t be shy; step up to the plate and share your knowledge and experience, and contribute something. This will build on your experience base, and allow you to practice being in crisis situations. 

In the end, the best coaches are those who prepare, know the rules inside and out, and can lead their players strategically. Stopping in the middle of a crisis to learn more about the business, means you haven’t learned the business well enough and you aren’t prepared to lead. 

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Reposted from asisonline.org

Daisy Torres wants to pursue a career in law enforcement after she graduates from the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. So, when she was looking for student employment opportunities, she discovered that the university hired students to work in its public safety dispatch center.

She applied for a position, but wasn’t hired. That didn’t deter her, however, and during her sophomore year of college in 2016 she found out about another opportunity for undergraduates to work with the University’s Department of Public Safety: becoming a student security officer.

Torres filled out an application, interviewed, passed a background check, and was offered a position as an officer that fall, patrolling the campus and interacting with students.

“At first, the whole thing was intimidating, but the officers have been very helpful and supportive. They guide you,” Torres says. “They encourage you to ask questions to make sure you don’t mess up.”

The experience has also offered her a chance to see what a career in law enforcement might look like and gain a better understanding of how first responders interact with students and respond to incidents.

“As a regular person, you just see the ambulance come or you see the officer coming to take care of something—but going through the training you realize this is hard work,” she explains. “It definitely humanizes the process, so it’s really fun for me. It’s fun getting to know the people, the officers you are working with. You get to see the person behind the badge.”

That’s the goal of the Student Security Officer Program at the University of Iowa, which was created in the fall of 2016 when Assistant Vice President and Director of Public Safety Scott Beckner was hired to lead the Public Safety Department.

Beckner has spent more than 30 years in law enforcement, including 25 in higher education law enforcement with roles at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, Georgia; Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia; and Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. 

“I believe in a community policing philosophy, meaning that our police and security officers need to go where the students are comfortable to build positive relationships with them, even if it’s not the environment in which the officers themselves are most comfortable,” Beckner says. “This enables both parties to establish meaningful communication and receive better feedback from both the law enforcement officers and the students.”​

THE PROGRAM

The University of Iowa covers 1,880 acres that straddle the Iowa River. Approximately 33,000 students are enrolled each semester, and most freshman undergraduates live on campus.

Protecting the campus community is the University of Iowa Public Safety Department, which has two major divisions: the police division and the security division. The police division is made up of roughly 45 armed state-certified police officers who patrol campus around the clock. The security division is made up of nine full-time security officers.

The university also has a dispatch center, which is the main dispatch center for campus 911 calls and the back-up dispatch center for the county. 

When Beckner came on board in 2016, the university hired students as dispatchers in the dispatch center and also as security staff at the University of Iowa Art Museum. Based on his experience at prior institutions, Beckner wanted to expand the university’s use of student employees for campus security positions.

“Hiring student security officers is another layer of our community policing approach,” Beckner says. “It gives our officers another opportunity to connect with students to get a pulse of what’s happening on campus from the student perspective.”

With this mind-set, Beckner instructed the department to create the Student Security Officer Program to hire students to be the eyes and ears of campus public safety.

“I’m not afraid to try new things, and I’m not afraid to fail,” Beckner explains. “I think it’s just as valuable to know what doesn’t work as what does work, and you don’t always know until you try. So many people in law enforcement are afraid to fail because of the spotlight we’re in, and we have to learn to get beyond that mind-set.”

To push the program forward, Security Supervisor Beau Hartsock was pulled off his regular assignment at the time—head of security at the University of Iowa Art Museum—and brought in to recruit students and interview them for officer positions.

To recruit students, Hartsock and others in the department used the university’s Hire a Hawk program that lists student employment opportunities and attended the campus job fair. They also went to Introduction to Criminology classes—the first core class in the Criminology, Law, and Justice major—to contact students who might be interested in the program. 

“The Intro to Criminology is a prerequisite to the program that every student coming in has to go through,” Hartsock explains. “We go to those classes and do a 10-minute pitch of what we have to offer and tell them about the department. If they wish to apply, they can.”

 Within one month, the program had 30 students on staff as security officers, with a peak in the middle of the academic year of 75 student officers. The students completed training conducted by full-time security staff on mandated issues, including radio operation, the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, bloodborne pathogens, and CPR. 

The student officers were then trained for each of their particular assignments. These assignments included dorm patrol, building checks, the art museum, athletic events security, the campus transportation service called Nite Ride, and the Hawkeye Storage Lot.

“We don’t train everybody on everything; we train on an as-needed basis in accordance with whatever assignment they are working,” Hartsock says. 

This is because each assignment has different requirements. For instance, students assigned to Nite Ride—a transportation service that provides rides for students between 7:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.—act as dispatchers, taking calls and managing the app that sends the vehicle out to pick students up.

Dorm patrol requires that students walk the dormitories, using a pipe check-in system from Guard1Plus to track their progress throughout the campus. “A student could potentially walk five or six miles a night, especially on the weekends, looking for any safety concerns, damage to property, and things like that,” Hartsock says.

Student officers have similar responsibilities when they are assigned to the libraries or the Voxman Music Building, which is a new building on campus that houses valuable musical equipment. 

The art museum job is a“sought-after” assignment, Hartsock says, because students sit at a desk, greet people who come into the building, and keep an eye on the building’s video camera feeds, making it a relatively low-key assignment. 

The other assignment for students is Hawkeye Storage Lot, which is vulnerable to thefts from parked cars because it is separated from the main campus, Hartsock says. 

“We have students that also sit out there and do patrols every half hour in an electric car around the lot for about 10 minutes,” he explains.

Students on patrol wear yellow polos and black pants and have utility belts with pipes for the check-in system, masks for CPR, and radios to reach the dispatch office. If they notice suspicious activity or an incident unfolding, student officers are instructed to radio into the dispatch office and a police officer or security officer will be sent to their location to respond.

“First and foremost, students are trained to be the eyes and ears of the university only,” according to Hartsock. “In no way are they to physically or verbally intervene…we train them on what could potentially get them in danger, and to use their best judgment.” 

So far, the university has had no incidents of harm to a student security officer while on duty, according to Hartsock. 

“We have the benefit of our student security officers carrying radios—the same exact radios that our police officers and our full-time security officers carry—so they are literally a key click away from our dispatch,” he adds. “And a lot of times our police officers are scanning our student security officer channels, and they can start heading that way even before it is actually dispatched by a dispatcher.”​

CAMPUS IMPACT

When Torres was initially hired, her friends and fellow students’ first question was: Do you get to carry a gun? Student security officers are not armed, but they are taken seriously by their peers and this support has helped them build relationships on campus.

“I’ve been the night dispatcher for Nite Ride and [my friends] don’t bother calling the phones because they know I’m working, so they’ll text me and say, ‘Is there a chance you could send a Nite Ride my way?’” Torres says. “They think it’s interesting because they get to see me in the dorm sometimes and say, ‘I know the security officer.’” 

Building this sense of community helps give credibility to the campus police because the student security officers get to know police officers as real people, says Police Captain Mark Bullock. 

 “Kids, when they talk about these officers as people rather than as a profession, it takes away some of those barriers that may have previously been there,” he explains.

Another benefit to having the student security officers on patrol is that it can make reporting a sensitive crime, such as a sexual assault, easier for students because they are talking to a peer instead of a police officer.

“If it is a sensitive crime, and if you have a familiar face or a peer who is part of an organization like ours, we would hope that would make reporting that crime just a little bit easier,” Bullock says. “It’s a well-known thing that sexual assaults are underreported. We would like to do anything we can to make the occurrences go down—ideally eliminate them completely. But at least knowing about them is a step in the right direction.”

For less serious offenses, such as smoking in a dorm room, Bullock says students are much more likely to bring that up to a student security officer on dorm patrol than to a security officer.

Students are “not going to be as open to saying that to a police officer as they would to one of their peers,” he adds. “General quality of life issues within our campus have been easier to report by having a peer to talk to.”

And in instances like smoking in a prohibited space, student security officers have several options on how to handle the situation, including reporting it to the residence assistant on duty, the front desk of the building they are in, or dispatch for a police response, if necessary.

Student security officers are all equipped with a radio, "so it’s a direct line of access to the police so information is coming in in real time,” according to Bullock. “There’s nothing lost in translation.”​

FUTURE PLANS

The Student Security Officer Program has been viewed as a success so far, and the university plans to expand it during the fall of 2017 to hire approximately 125 student officers for the academic year.

“We’re actually getting ready to do a very large hiring surge of possibly 40 to 50 more students just to cover one assignment that’s in the works right now,” says Hartsock, who declined to provide more detail about what the assignment was.

The department itself is also making a push to have student security officers, police officers, and security staff be increasingly more involved with campus life in their off hours. One initiative is paying for staff to participate in intramural sports on campus. 

“So you’re interacting with the university community, humanizing us in the sense that students get to know us personally, see a familiar face out of uniform as well as in uniform,” Hartsock explains. “Being more approachable and being looked at in a way that we’re really genuinely here to help.”

All of this goes back to Beckner’s focus of creating a community policing approach to campus security at the university.

“If University of Iowa officers can begin to know students on a personal level—when it’s not in the context of punitive action—I believe we’ll be able to solve more problems proactively,” he says. “One of my early goals was to begin to break down the barriers between students and campus police, and I think this program is helping us do that.” 

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Reposted from CSOonline.com

Responding to a cyber security incident has its own unique objectives and requires its own recovery plan.

Many enterprises blend their disaster recovery and security recovery plans into a single, neat, easy-to-sip package. But does this approach make sense?

Not really, say a variety of disaster and security recovery experts, including Marko Bourne, who leads Booz Allen’s emergency management, disaster assistance and mission assurance practice. "Security and disaster plans are related, but not always the same thing," he observes.

The objectives in disaster recovery and security recovery plans are inherently different and, at times, conflicting, explains Inigo Merino, former senior vice president of Deutsche Bank’s corporate security and business continuity unit and currently CEO of cyber threat detection firm Cienaga Systems. "The most obvious difference is that disaster recovery is about business continuity, whereas information security is about information asset protection," he notes. "The less evident aspect is that security incident response often requires detailed root cause analysis, evidence collection, preservation and a coordinated and--often--stealthy response."

Such operations usually have to be handled very delicately. "On the other hand, [business continuity plans] are by nature very public events, requiring all hands on deck, large scale communications with the objective of rapid, tactical business resumption," says Merino.

For disaster recovery plans, you almost focus on data quality first and then business processing second," says Scott Carlson, a technical fellow at BeyondTrust, an identity management and vulnerability management products developer. "For security, you rely on capability of protective control with less regard for whether or not you lost past data-- it's much more important to 'protect forward' in a security plan."

Similar, yet different

Many enterprises combine their disaster and security strategies as a matter of convenience, lured by the plans' apparent superficial similarities. "At a high-level, disaster recovery and security plans both do similar activities," says Stieven Weidner, a senior manager with management consulting firm Navigate. "Initially, both plans will have procedures to minimize the impact of an event, followed closely by procedures to recover from the event and, finally, procedures to test and return to production," he notes. Both types of plans also generally include a "lessons learned" process to minimize the possibility of a similar event occurring again.

Yet scratching the surface reveals that disaster and security recovery plans are actually fundamentally different. "[Disaster] recovery plans are focused on recovering IT operations, whereas security plans are focused on preventing or limiting IT interruptions and maintaining IT operations," Weidner notes.

A security recovery plan is designed to stop, learn, and then correct the incident. "A disaster recovery plan may follow similar steps, but nomenclature would not likely use 'detection' to describe a fire or flood event, nor would there be much in the way of analytics," says Peter Fortunato, a manager in the risk and business advisory practice at New England-based accounting firm Baker Newman Noyes."Further, not many disasters require the collection of evidence."

Another risk in merging plans is the possibility of gaining unwanted public attention. "For instance, invoking a disaster recovery plan often requires large-scale notifications going out to key stakeholders," Merino says. "However, this is the last thing you want during an issue requiring investigation, such as a suspected [network] breach, because of the need to collect and preserve the integrity of highly volatile electronic evidence."

Stitching together complex security and disaster recovery rules and procedures can also result in the creation of a needlessly bulky, ambiguous and sometimes contradictory document. "If you try to combine processes and resources into a single plan, it can muddy the waters, oversimplifying or overcomplicating the process," states Dan Didier, vice president of services for GreyCastle Security, a cybersecurity services provider. While some disaster and security recovery processes may be similar, such as ranking an incident's overall impact, other processes are not as easy to combine. "In addition, you are likely to have different resources involved, so training and testing is complicated, as are updates to the plan after the fact," Didier explains.

Fires, storms, blackouts and other physical events are all unpredictable, yet their nature is generally well understood. Security threats, on the other hand, are both unpredictable and, given the rapidly advancing nature of cyber criminality, not generally well understood, either. This means that security recovery strategies must be revisited and updated more frequently than their disaster recovery counterparts,

A security recovery plan is undoubtedly more difficult to keep up-to-date than a disaster recovery plan, says Anthony McFarland, a privacy and data security attorney in the Nashville office of the law firm Bass, Berry and Sims. "New external cyber threats arise weekly," he notes. The list of man-made or natural disasters that could threaten a business, however, is relatively static. "Even when a business expands geographically, the number of new anticipatable disasters is limited, McFarland says.

Response to a disaster must be immediate, yet response to a cyber-event must be even quicker. "This response reality is amplified because a company may have forewarning of a pending disaster, like a tornado, flood or earthquake, but no advance notice of a targeted cyberattack," McFarland says.

"The nature of the threats within security recovery plans are more dynamic than within disaster recovery, and therefore require continual review and update," says Mark Testoni, president and CEO of SAP National Security Services.  "For example, recent ransomware attacks, such as WannaCry, are incredibly destructive and require security recovery plans to examine how to effectively respond to new threats and risks."

The discovery process is the most important aspect of both security and disaster planning, Bourne says. "Plans must be adaptable and key leaders must understand what the plans are trying to achieve in order to ensure maximum success," he adds.

Making it a team effort

While most experts advocate creating and maintaining separate disaster and security recovery plans, they also note that both strategies must be periodically examined for potential gaps and conflicts. "The best course of action to have the plans complement one another is to make sure that you have the same team working through both of them," says Steve Rubin, a partner at the Long Island, N.Y., law firm Moritt Hock & Hamroff, and co-chair of its cybersecurity practice group. "Not only will they will be stronger and complement one another, but will also be more effective and resilient in the long run."

Weidner notes that it's okay, however, to have separate teams in charge of security and disaster plans as long as they regularly coordinate their strategies and goals with each other. "Each team, whether supporting security or IT recovery, needs to manage their own specific plan requirements," Weidner says. "However, oversight and governance should be centralized to guarantee events will be supported using the same methodology, such as communications to executive teams, company stakeholders and customers."

Whether planning is handled by one or two teams, the right people need to be brought onboard, Didier says. "Senior management plays a critical role and must oversee the operation," he says.

"The CIO, CISO and network administrators will be integral members of both teams," McFarland observes. However, many disaster recovery team members will have no, or only limited, involvement in the work of the security group, and vice-versa. "For example," McFarland notes, "facilities managers are critical members of a disaster recovery team, but typically not needed in the [security] group unless there was a physical loss or theft of tangible/hardcopy data from an office."

Operations and security teams should review each other’s plans in a controlled and constructive manner to determine how they can be leveraged in support of each other, suggestsMorey Haber, vice president of technology at BeyondTrust. "These policies should not be developed on islands and if possible be tested together," he says. "This helps address extreme edge cases while maintaining separation of duty requirements and building team synergies."

Lessons learned

As enterprises learn what works and what doesn’t work in both security and disaster recovery planning, a growing number now realize that security recovery is not disaster recovery and that each has very different needs. "As organizations mature, they learn that the purpose of security incident response is much more nuanced than merely a restoration of business and that many of the functions typically invoked in disaster recovery for business continuity purposes are either not applicable to cyber security events, or in some cases, harmful to security incident response and forensics," Merino says.

"The key to having successful security and disaster recovery plans is to document, manage, test plans and and develop a common governance, communication and escalation methodology," Weidner says. "This unified approach will minimize confusion and decrease the time to recover from events."

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Reposted from artnews.com

Friday morning August 25, as Hurricane Harvey approached the Gulf Coast of Texas, museums in the region closed, saying they would keep their doors closed for the weekend. Harvey, which hit the state as a Category 4 hurricane, was downgraded to a tropical storm but has battered the area since, with rain falling in unprecedented volumes and rampant flooding as a result. The crisis is expected to continue for a long time to come in small towns throughout Texas and in Houston, the fourth-largest city in the United States.

Among the institutions that closed early or completely before the arrival of the storm were the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Galveston Arts Center, the Menil Collection in Houston, the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in Beaumont, and the Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, which is near where Harvey made landfall on Friday evening.

A bit farther back from the coast, other institutions closed for the weekend included the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, the Contemporary Austin, and the San Antonio Museum of Art. The Houston Press compiled a list of arts events that were canceled or postponed.

Updates:

– Sunday, August 27, 4 p.m.: A spokesperson for the Menil Collection told ARTnews this afternoon that museum officials have been monitoring the situation closely. “We have done preventative sandbagging at buildings that require it,” the spokesperson said by email. “At this time, and thankfully, our buildings have not been impacted by the storm. Our director, conservation, and registration departments, which includes art handling services, are receiving regular updates about building status.” The museum is closed to staff on Monday. It is always closed to the public on Mondays and Tuesdays.

– Monday, August 28, 12:15 a.m.: The Galveston Arts Center, which rescheduled openings for its latest exhibitions from Saturday to September 9, was “doing very well under the current circumstances,” its curator, Dennis Nance, said in an email Sunday afternoon. When Hurricane Ike hit Galveston Island in 2008, the building GAC calls home on Strand Street suffered damage in excess of $1 million, and artwork totaling more than $100,000 was lost. The institution returned to the building in 2015. “Based on the organization’s experience with Ike, we’ve made necessary preparations to secure all artwork and the building,” Nance said. “We’ve deinstalled and secured all work in our second-floor vault and galleries. As of today, the building has not taken on flood water or lost power. There was minimal flooding of the streets on and around the Strand.”

– Monday, August 28, 12:35 p.m.: The Rockport Center for the Arts, which is located near Corpus Christi, south of Houston, has suffered damage, according to its executive director, Luis Purón. “From images I have been provided and third party accounts, it appears the building has sustained serious external damage,” Purón said in a post on Facebook. “One image demonstrates that the front porch is completely gone and a roof structure in the front of the building is exposed and thus compromised. It is entirely possible that additional damage to the roof exists, yet only an onsite inspection will reveal that.” The director added later in the post, “It remains unclear if all the sculptures in the Sculpture Garden collection survived the 130 miles-per-hour winds of Harvey’s Category 4 direct impact to Rockport. We won’t know about internal damage until we are able to re-enter and inspect the building. The timeline for that is uncertain.” Purón said the museum was boarded on Thursday and “the time to prepare for this evacuation was minimal, as information regarding the strength of the storm changed.” All of the institution’s staff members are safe.

– Monday, August 28, 2 p.m.: A spokesperson for the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston said in an email that “thanks to the advance preparations of our Hurricane Planning Group—from sandbagging and floodgates to emergency pumps—the storm’s impact has been greatly mitigated so far. Our on-site staff are all safe, and our collections have not had any damage. We had some isolated leaks on the main campus.” At the Bayou Bend Gardens, which are part of the MFAH and located a few miles away, “outbuildings and basement were flooded but that water has receded,” the spokesperson added. “The house and its collections remain secure.”

– Monday, August 28, 2:10 p.m.: The situation at the Menil Collection remains the same after a tense night in the city surrounding it. “No impact on our buildings,” a spokesperson wrote. “Our 24/7 maintenance and security monitoring continues. At this time, the museum and its administrative offices will remain closed to the public and staff through Wednesday, August 30. We will continue to monitor closely and update regarding closures as needed.”

– Monday, August 28, 3:55 p.m.: Bad fortune has so far spared the campus of Rice University, which plays home to the new Moody Center for the Arts as well as large outdoor artworks by James Turrell and Michael Heizer. “We are deeply concerned for our fellow Houstonians, but are meanwhile fortunate that the Moody is faring well,” a spokesperson for the center wrote. “Our building was constructed to withstand storms, and its location on campus is elevated to prevent flooding. We have no immediate information on the Turrell and Heizer installations but hope to get word about them before long.”

— Monday, August 28, 4:30 p.m.: Project Row Houses, a community-based nonprofit in Houston’s Third Ward, has been largely unaffected by the storm. “In the Third Ward, we have no standing water because we don’t have any bayous near us to overflow into our neighborhood,” Rick Lowe, the founding director of the organization, wrote. “Plus, Highway 288 dips in our area and acts as the reservoir for us, and it is holding steady only half full. I’ve spent most of the day driving between Third Ward, Fifth Ward, and Montrose buying and delivering groceries to those who can’t get out.”

— Tuesday, August 29, 1:10 p.m.: The Menil Collection was not affected by a deluge of rain that continued last night and into the day. “[Director] Rebecca Rabinow reported that the buildings are in great shape following her morning walk through,” a spokesperson said. “We are so grateful for that news and for our security and maintenance staff who will continue monitoring. No decisions yet about reopening. We are checking in with our staff to get updates about the storm’s impact on them. We hope that all are safe and sound.”

– Tuesday, August 29, 1:45 p.m.: Like many institutions throughout the Houston area and the surrounding region today, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston are closed because of the storm. A spokesperson for CAMH shared a statement with press that read in part, “Our thoughts are with those who have been impacted by Harvey and our fellow Houstonians during the ongoing storm. We are thankful to our crew who prepared CAMH for the storm and who continue to monitor the museum. We will keep you updated with closures and changes to programming via social media.”

– Tuesday, August 29, 2:30 p.m.: In a statement issued on August 29, the National Endowment for the Arts said it would work with arts institutions to help them rebuild. “We are coordinating with the Texas Commission on the Arts and the Division of the Arts in the Louisiana Office of Cultural Development to assess the situation and those arts organizations hardest hit by Hurricane Harvey,” the NEA’s chairman, Jane Chu, said in a statement. “As the current situation stabilizes, the National Endowment for the Arts is prepared to direct additional funds to these state arts agencies for re-granting to affected organizations, as we have done in the past.”

— Wednesday, August 30, 2:10 p.m.: Numerous Houston-area arts institutions remained closed today as officials worked to ascertain the extent of the damage throughout the region. Glasstire, a blog about the arts in Texas, has created a list of emergency resources for artists.

— Wednesday, August 30, 4:05 p.m.: The National Endowment for the Humanities announced plans to grant $1 million to libraries, arts institutions, and colleges and universities affected by the hurricane. Texas and Louisiana’s state humanities councils will receive $250,000, and the Texas Cultural Emergency Response Alliance and the Heritage Emergency National Task Force will also get money from the NEH as they continue to assess damage resulting from the storm. Cultural institutions in FEMA-designated disaster areas can also apply for emergency grants for up to $30,000.

— Wednesday, August 30, 4:15 p.m.: The Menil Collection will reopen to employees who are able to travel on Thursday and then to the public for the resumption of its regular hours on Friday at 11 a.m.

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Reposted from Norway Today

Wednesday afternoon it was clear that at least 245 items from the Iron Age and Viking Era was stolen during a break at the weekend, according to NRK. Thieves has climbed scaffolding on the outside of the building and shattered a pane on the seventh floor to get into the museum premises.

The alarm went of twice, but the security guards who were at work did not notice anything suspicious.

The museum is working full blast to get an overview of the scale, but believes the number of stolen objects may increase to 300 when the museum expects to have a reasonably safe estimate next week.

Significant number

– It is a significant number. This is not a burglary where someone has come in and been in a rush. We are becoming increasingly despaired as the list of stolen objects grows longer, says Head of Department, Henrik von Achen, to NTB.

On the newly created Facebook page Theft at the Historical Museum – the Viking Treasure, the museum has published a series of pictures of the 2,000 year old artifacts, asking people to share the photo series and keep their eyes open when they go online.

Reconstructs the burglary

– Look for our cultural heritage on Finn, eBay and other markets, the museum writes, despite the assumed low monetary value, believes the items will be attemted sold online.

– We are now trying to reconstruct exactly what happened, but it takes time to clarify this. The most important thing for us now is first and foremost to get an overview of what’s stolen and if possible to get the items back, says von Achen.

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