• Guidelines for securing business records in hurricane season

    A data protection specialist developed best practices guidelines to assist businesses along the Atlantic coastline to assess their business continuity in preparation for the hurricane season

  • London’s financial district employees say City unprepared for Olympics

    Nearly 70 percent of investment bank staff think that the City, London’s financial district, is lagging behind in preparation for the Summer Olympic Games, with nearly half of respondents unsure whether their company has a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) in place

  • Day of wide-spread domestic drone use nears

    So far, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration( FAA) has issued 266 active testing permits for civilian-drone applications, but has yet to allow drones wide-scale access to U.S. airspace; law enforcement and industry officials say that it is only a matter of time before the FAA would allow the more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies and departments to begin to use drones for surveillance

  • Psychemedics receives additional FDA clearances for hair analysis drug testing

    Psychemedics developed a technology, using FDA-cleared radioimmunoassays (RIA), for the detection of drugs of abuse, and says it was the first laboratory to receive FDA clearances ten years ago for screening assays used in hair testing for drugs of abuse; the technology detects cocaine, opiates, PCP, methamphetamine, and marijuana using enzyme immunoassay (EIA) analysis of head and body hair

  • Manchester, New Hampshire police orders 250 X2 ECD

    Manchester, new Hampshire police department deploys 250 TASER X2 ECD, the largest such deployment in New England

  • Global food-trade network vulnerable to fast spread of contaminants

    As the world’s population climbs past seven billion, the sustainable production and distribution of food is balanced against the need to ensure its chemical and microbiological safety; this is not easy: a rigorous analysis of the international food-trade network shows the network’s vulnerability to the fast spread of contaminants as well as the correlation between known food poisoning outbreaks and the centrality of countries on the network

  • CAST Lighting’s LED Perimeter Light wins industry innovation award

    The task of illuminating long perimeter fences has always been problematic; installing tall pole-mounted luminaires to flood fence regions with light is expensive in material and labor and wastes energy, since most of the illumination falls outside the perimeter region; typical metal halide pole-mounted lamps would require nearly 4,000 watts to light 500 feet of fence; CAST Lighting’s LED Perimeter Light uses just seven watts per luminaire, thus illuminating 500 feet of fence with less than 150 watts of power, saving 96 percent on energy costs; the new LED Perimeter Light captured the industry coveted innovation award at LightFair International 2012

  • AT&T receives DHS disaster preparedness certification

    AT&T said Friday that it is the first company in the United States to earn DHS certification for disaster preparedness; AT&T’s certification is the first under the DHS Voluntary Private Sector Preparedness Program, designed to enable private sector organizations to enhance their capabilities for planning, responding to, and recovering from natural disasters and other threats

  • Deadly Italy earthquakes result in $6 billion economic loss

    Two earthquakes and subsequent aftershocks struck northern Italy within a 9-day period, killing twenty-five people, injuring more than 400 others and causing extensive damage to the cultural heritage throughout the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, in addition to businesses and personal property; prolonged periods of rain affected China throughout the month of May, with at least 143,000 homes damaged or destroyed

  • Bolstering SMBs’ disaster preparedness

    Small and medium business (SMB) in the United States are not ready for natural or man-made disasters, and for the consequences of such disasters; this is worrisome, because for a small business a disaster can be potentially devastating; being prepared can sometimes mean the difference between surviving and sinking

  • ISO offers new standard for business continuity management

    Incidents take many forms ranging from large scale natural disasters and acts of terror to technology-related accidents and environmental incidents; the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published an international standard addressing business continuity management to contribute making organizations in both public and private sectors more resilient

  • Mentoring small business in disaster resiliency

    In January 2012, FEMA announced a new campaign Small Business is Big, aimed to increase outreach and educational opportunities to small businesses in the emergency management arena; a new private-industry program, the Business Emergency Management Mentorship, is directly inspired by this FEMA campaign and is an effort to help small businesses often lacking the resources to be better prepared for all-hazards disasters

  • EF Johnson named to DHS TacCom supplier group

    TacCom is a multiple award Indefinite-Delivery, Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contract established in 2012 to help DHS purchase a full array of tactical communications products, infrastructure, and services for mission critical, public safety communications; the total funds spent on equipment through this contract may not exceed $3 billion, inclusive of options

  • Alabama on the 9-1-1 forefront -- again

    The first 9-1-1 call in the United States was placed in Alabama more than forty years ago; now, Alabama is on the 9-1-1 cutting edge again by replacing its TDM call routing  with a IP-based and Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) solution; the new system supports voice as well as text, images, video and other IP-based requests for emergency services

  • Insuring against Olympic cancelation

    Starting on 27 July, the 2012 Olympic Games in London will see more than 10,000 athletes from nearly 200 different nations compete in 302 disciplines; nine million spectators are expected at the competition venues, while between three and four billion people will follow the spectacle on television; if the Games were called off as a result of terrorist act or another disaster, Munich Re would provide cover of around 350 million euros through several policies