View as a webpage / Share

Volume 23 — Issue 33 | August 17, 2023

State of 911 webinar focuses on interventions for telecommunicator mental health and wellness

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA’s) National 911 Program will host a special 2-hour session of its State of 911 webinar series on Tuesday, Aug. 29, from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. EDT. The webinar will focus on telecommunicator mental health and wellness.

A recent national survey of 911 professionals published by NENA: The 9-1-1 Association and its survey partner, Carbyne, revealed a seasoned, overstressed workforce grappling with surging call volumes, complex compounded emergencies, outdated technologies, and insufficient support.

However, despite being a psychologically and physically taxing occupation, research also shows that many 911 telecommunicators are resilient and manage the stress of the job.

This webinar will first share data regarding the presence of stress and mental health conditions in the 911 industry. Then, participants will learn about individual- and agency-level, evidence-based interventions that have been shown to bolster resilience and reduce suffering for our most valued commodity in 911, its people.

These interventions include “quiet rooms”, which are designated areas to decompress; light therapy; the use of therapy dogs within Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs); and other means of reducing stress and mitigating impacts to telecommunicators’ overall health. Presenters will discuss how 911 centers are beginning to incorporate these interventions at the agency level to effectively tackle stress in the workplace.

Learn more and register for this webinar on NHTSA’s website.

(Source: NHTSA)

Highlights

State of 911 webinar focuses on interventions for telecommunicator mental health and wellness

New national dashboard to track heat-related illness

2023 Community Wildfire Defense Grants application period now open

Virtual event: 2023 NIST-NSF Disaster Resilience Research Symposium

Cyber Threats

The U.S. Fire Administration operates the Emergency Management and Response – Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EMR-ISAC).

For information regarding the EMR-ISAC visit www.usfa.dhs.gov/emr-isac or contact the EMR-ISAC office at: (301) 447-1325 and/or fema-emr-isac@fema.dhs.gov.

New national dashboard to track heat-related illness

Many areas of the country are currently experiencing extreme heat, particularly in the South and Southwestern regions of the United States. Phoenix, Arizona just experienced a 31-day streak of 110-degree days, breaking the 18-day record set in 1974. The latest forecast from the National Weather Service predicts dangerous heat will redevelop this week in the Central and Southeast U.S.

Some groups face a greater risk of heat-related illness than others, so, preparedness and response initiatives directed toward extreme heat events are necessary to keep vulnerable populations safe.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Climate Change and Healthy Equity (OCCHE), in partnership with NHTSA, recently launched a first-of-its-kind national data dashboard called the Heat-Related Illness EMS Activation Surveillance Dashboard (EMS HeatTracker).

The EMS HeatTracker will help target heat-related health resources and prioritize life-saving interventions for communities most impacted by extreme heat.

The new tool maps emergency medical services (EMS) responses to heat-related illness across the country. It draws data from the National EMS Information System (NEMSIS), which captures patient care records from approximately 95 percent of all EMS agencies from the U.S. states and territories. NEMSIS is maintained by NHTSA’s Office of EMS and hosted by the University of Utah.

The dashboard can display data by state or county for all 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. It highlights jurisdictions with the highest rates of heat-related EMS activations. It can also display information about the time it took EMS to reach the patient, number of heat-related deaths among EMS activations, and more. The dashboard will be updated weekly to show data on a rolling basis.

The EMS HeatTracker is available through the Heat.gov portal, which was launched last summer to provide the public and decision-makers with clear, timely and science-based information to understand and reduce the health risks of extreme heat. Heat.gov is part of the National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS), which was created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For more information about the new EMS HeatTracker, see the HHS press release. To stay informed about extreme heat, visit Heat.gov.

(Sources: HHS, NIHHIS, NEMSIS, NOAA)

2023 Community Wildfire Defense Grants application period now open

The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Forest Service has announced the open application period for the second round of the new Community Wildfire Defense Grants (CWDG) program.

The CWDG program is intended to help at-risk local communities and Tribes plan for and reduce the risk of wildfire. The program was authorized in 2022 through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. It prioritizes communities that have a high or very high wildfire hazard potential, are low income, or have been impacted by a severe disaster that affects their risk of wildfire.

The program provides funding to communities for two primary purposes:

• To develop and revise Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP).
• To implement projects described in a Community Wildfire Protection Plan that is less than ten years old.

The CWDG program also helps communities in the wildland urban interface (WUI) implement the three goals of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy - to maintain resilient landscapes, create fire-adapted communities and improve wildfire response.

There are four Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 Community Wildfire Defense Grant opportunities:

• Tribes (USDA-FS-2023-CWDG-TRIBES).
• Western States and Territories (USDA-FS-2023-CWDG-CWSF).
• Northeast-Midwest States (USDA-FS-2023-CWDG-NEMW).
• Southern States (USDA-FS-2023-CWDG-SGSF).

Communities can use the CWDG Dashboard as a tool to determine their level of wildfire risk, which will help applicants determine their need for this funding. This tool was developed as part of the Forest Service’s Wildfire Risk to Communities website at wildfirerisk.org, which provides interactive maps, charts, and data to help communities in the United States understand, explore, and reduce wildfire risk.

Several applicant webinars were held in August and are now available on-demand. These webinars provide an overview of the CWDG program, a summary of changes since last year, who is eligible to apply, how to complete the application and use the portal, grants and agreements, national tools, and the grant timeline.

Visit the USDA Forest Service’s CWDG website to access the webinar recordings, notices of funding opportunities, eligibility information, and instructions on how to apply.

Applications for FY2023 CWDG funding are due by October 31, 2023.

(Source: USDA)

Virtual event: 2023 NIST-NSF Disaster Resilience Research Symposium

The Engineering Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will host its 6th annual Disaster Resilience Research Symposium on August 23-24, 2023.

This free, virtual event is an opportunity to showcase the latest research supported by NIST’s Disaster Resilience Grant Research Program. This grant program is jointly coordinated and funded by NIST and the National Science Foundation (NSF) with the goal of increasing community and infrastructure resilience to natural hazards such as droughts, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and fires.

Research projects funded through this program contribute scientific and engineering insights that can enhance building designs, codes and standards and improve safety standards for construction of buildings, bridges, and other infrastructure.

The symposium will feature keynote speakers specializing in the resilience of cyber-physical infrastructure and disaster resilience through Earth system science. The agenda is organized into several tracks: Wind, Earthquakes, Fire, and Infrastructure and Community Resilience. The symposium concludes with a special panel discussion focused on disaster data sharing.

This multi-disciplinary research supports a variety of programs at NIST, including the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program, National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program, Disaster and Failure Studies, and the Reduced Ignition of Building Components in Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires Project.

Visit NIST.gov to access the full agenda, learn more about keynote speakers, and to register.

(Source: NIST)

Cyber Incident Assistance

MS-ISAC
SOC@cisecurity.org
1-866-787-4722

IdentityTheft.gov

IC3

Cybercrime Support Network

General Information

StopRansomware.gov

CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog

FTC scam list

CISA alerts

Law Enforcement Cyber Center

TLP Information

CISA releases JCDC Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) Cyber Defense Plan

On Aug. 16, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released the Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) Cyber Defense Plan, the first proactive Plan developed by industry and government partners through the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC). This plan addresses systemic risks facing the exploitation of RMM software. Cyber threat actors can gain footholds via RMM software into managed service providers (MSPs) or manage security service providers (MSSPs) servers and, by extension, can cause cascading impacts for the small and medium-sized organizations that are MSP/MSSP customers.

This release builds off the JCDC 2023 Planning Agenda and marks a major milestone in the continued evolution and maturation of the Collaborative’s development

Visit CISA.gov/JCDC to learn about other ways JCDC is uniting the global cyber community in the collective defense of cyberspace.

(Source: CISA)

FBI updates cloud security guidance for state and local law enforcement

The FBI continues to make more investments in cloud computing and moving workloads to the cloud, and so late last year, CJIS updated the CJIS Security Policy to enhance security measures for state, local and other agencies accessing federal criminal info such as fingerprints, arrest records and more.

In an update notated as version 5.9.1, CJIS enacted a significant change to previous security policies, tightening rules around the encryption of data in transit to or at rest in the cloud. Prior to this update, many agencies relied on vendors to issue, manage or access encryption keys. However, the new CJIS Security Policy forbids doing so, requiring agencies to establish independent encryption.

In an update that closely followed, notated as version 5.9.2, CJIS expanded the requirements for using multifactor authentication to access criminal justice information. Prior to this update, state and local law enforcement personnel accessing cloud data in their headquarters buildings or in their patrol cars did not have to use multifactor authentication to secure access. The patrol car was thought of as a secure facility, and the police department or sheriff’s office was likewise considered a secure facility. Now, however, CJIS requires law enforcement personnel to use multifactor authentication at every location, including headquarters and patrol cars.

Law enforcement and criminal justice agencies have until Oct. 1 to comply with the updated guidance.

(Source: StateTech Magazine)

Freezing out the risk of thermal attacks

A team of computer security experts have developed a set of recommendations to help defend against ‘thermal attacks’ which can steal personal information. Thermal attacks use heat-sensitive cameras to read the traces of fingerprints left on surfaces like smartphone screens, computer keyboards and PIN pads. Hackers can use the relative intensity of heat traces across recently touched surfaces to reconstruct users’ passwords.

The team identified 15 different approaches described in previous papers on computer security which could reduce the risk of thermal attacks. Those included ways to reduce the transfer of heat from users’ hands, by wearing gloves or rubber thimbles, or changing the temperature of hands by touching something cold before typing.

Approaches suggested in the literature also included pressing hands against surfaces or breathing on them to obscure their fingerprint heat once they had finished typing.

Other suggestions for increased security focused on hardware and software. A heating element behind surfaces could erase traces of finger heat, or surfaces could be made from materials which dissipate heat more rapidly. Security on public surfaces could be increased by introducing a physical shield which covers keys until heat has dissipated. Alternatively, eye-tracking inputs or biometric security could reduce the risk of successful thermal attacks.

(Source: Homeland Security News Wire)

Dallas to pay vendors $8.6M for their ransomware recovery services

The initial cleanup from a May ransomware attack that took most of Dallas’ services offline and disrupted operations for weeks bears a heavy financial cost for the city’s taxpayers.

The Dallas City Council on Wednesday approved a payment of almost $8.6 million to pay vendors for services linked to the cyberattack. The city did not name all of the vendors but previously identified CrowdStrike as its incident response partner.

The attack also raised significant personal data privacy concerns for city employees and their family members. The personal data of more than 26,000 individuals was compromised as part of the attack, including names, addresses, social security numbers and medical and health information, according to a data security breach report Dallas filed last week.

Royal, the threat actor responsible for the attack against Dallas, previously threatened to leak sensitive data if the city didn’t pay the ransom. A follow through on that threat remains uncorroborated.

(Source: Cybersecurity Dive)

Oregon Cybersecurity Center of Excellence to launch in October

Oregon is getting a new Cybersecurity Center of Excellence — fulfilling a goal proponents have pursued for years. The center comes after the governor signed a bill that will bring three major universities together to get the center up and running, at least at some capacity, by Oct 1.

The center of excellence (COE) is intended to supplement the state CIO’s work, per the bill. It’s tasked with responsibilities like developing the state’s cyber workforce, conducting research and development, coordinating information sharing and pursuing federal cyber funding. It will also provide cybersecurity services to local governments, libraries and school districts, and it will advise the governor, CIO and Legislature on cyber matters.

(Source: Government Technology)

The InfoGram is distributed weekly to provide members of the Emergency Services Sector with information concerning the protection of their critical infrastructures.

Fair Use Notice:
This InfoGram may contain copyrighted material that was not specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The EMR-ISAC believes this constitutes “fair use” of copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use copyrighted material contained within this document for your own purposes that go beyond “fair use,” you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Linking Policy and Disclaimer of Endorsement:
The appearance of external hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement of the linked websites, or the information, products or services contained therein. We provide these links and pointers solely for your information and convenience. When you select a link to an outside website, remember that you are subject to the privacy and security policies of the owners/sponsors of the outside website. To view information and resources on the policies that govern FEMA web content visit FEMA Website Information.

Section 504 Notice:
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act requires that FEMA grantees provide access to information for people with disabilities. If you need assistance accessing information or have any concerns about access, please contact FEMAWebTeam@fema.dhs.gov.