The title of a new report by the US General Services Administration (GSA), issued on January 30, 2020, speaks volumes: “Child Care Centers in GSA-Controlled Buildings Have Significant Security Vulnerabilities.” The 30-page report that follows, drawing…
Category: Security
A GAO Report Calls for Heightened Building Security
Last August 21, federal workers in the heart of Lower Manhattan saw a terrible situation: A disturbed man with a gun entered a building in which passports were issued and immigration cases decided. He killed a…
How the Murrah Building Bombing Changed Federal Facilities Security
Twenty years ago, on April 19th, 1995, Timothy McVeigh parked a rented Ryder truck at the curb, directly in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. In the back of that truck was a…
New Cybersecurity Center Planned
The President’s 218-page FY 2015 federal budget request was released a week ago and it underscores the growing importance of cybersecurity. The word “cyber”, for example, appears 40 times in the budget. Collaboration is another major…
Uncertainty Ahead over Terrorism Risk Insurance Act
As the ball drops on New Year’s Eve, uncertainty will surely rise over the impending expiration of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (TRIPRA). Under the program, the federal government caps losses faced by insurers…
DoD Landlords Dodge a Bullet (yet most don’t even know it)
Every once in a while a topic comes along that I really want to write about but can’t seem to get to it. This time that topic is the Department of Defense (DoD) security standards. A…
GovSpeak: “Standoff”
If you begin discussing government facilities security, sooner or later “standoff” will enter the conversation. Standoff, sometimes used synonymously with “setback”, is the term used to describe the distance between a building and the perimeter of…
Cybersecurity Grows Amid Broader Government Cutbacks
Despite widespread cutbacks throughout the federal government, one area has been growing across multiple agencies: cybersecurity. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), for example, has increased its cybersecurity workforce by more than 600 percent over the…
Why DoD Must Modify Its Security Standards
The Department of Defense (DoD) published its “DoD Minimum Antiterrorism Standards for Buildings” as part of its “Unified Facilities Criteria” in October 2003. Throughout the Defense community these are often referred to as the Anti-Terrorism /…
DoD is Evaluating Changes to its Facility Security Standards
In written testimony on March 7th before the House, Dr. Dorothy Robyn, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Installations and Environment, confirmed that DoD has embarked upon a formal initiative to review the Department’s anti-terrorism/force protection (ATFP)…