DHS Swine Flu Conference Call

There is a report on Icis.com from last night that DHS held a conference call yesterday with various manufacturers in critical industries, including chemical manufacturers, to discuss the current swine flu outbreak. The call was made as part of the standard communication procedures outlined in the National Infrastructure Protection Plan. DHS discussed precautions that companies should take as part of their contingency planning for the situation. The article quotes one participant describing the call this way:

“It was just a matter of raising awareness, telling people that if they’re not already taking action that they should be doing so, to instruct employees to take normal precautions, such as washing hands frequently, and that workers who have a fever should stay home or be sent home if necessary”.

Security Processes The way the article described the call, it dealt mainly with preventative actions that companies should take to keep critical manufacturing centers in operation during a potential pandemic situation. There was no mention of anything to specifically deal with security operations at such facilities. If there were no such discussion in the call, DHS certainly missed an important opportunity. Many high-risk chemical facilities, particularly the larger ones, have developed at least the sketch of a plan of how to deal with a variety of pandemic situations. I would be surprised if many of those had taken a serious look at how such a situation might affect the site security plan. Effect on Security Forces The first thing that obviously comes to mind is that in a wide spread pandemic situation the security force has the same potential to have large numbers of people out sick as does manufacturing, maintenance, or sales. Since many facilities have contract guard services, it is important for the facility security officer to contact the account manager and ensure that provisions have been made to have back-up personnel available to fill positions temporarily vacated due to illness. This is especially true if the facility uses armed guards as there is a much smaller pool of personnel qualified to fill those positions. While a facility might shut down in the worst part of the pandemic to reduce the chance of the illness spreading within their employee ranks, the same cannot be done for security personnel. In fact, the argument can certainly be made that the risk to a facility from a terrorist attack could actually increase during such a pandemic. A lowered security posture and the increased societal vulnerability during a pandemic could increase the perceived value and lower the perceived risk of such an attack; nothing like kicking a person, company, or society while they are down. Additionally, security personnel are probably going to be given additional tasks at facility entrances that deal with preventive actions for the pandemic. Screening for personnel who appear to be ill, and handing out special personal protective equipment (surgical masks for instance) are two such tasks that come to mind. While important to the health of employees and the facility, this will reduce their attention to standard security measures which must still remain their primary focus. Effect on Emergency Response Off site problems must also be taken into account by security managers. A major component of any site security plan is support from the local government, including security and emergency response. As those agencies are tasked for additional duties related to pandemic response their capability to respond to facility security and safety issues will be degraded. Significant illness within those forces will further upset response times and capabilities. Close communications with local agencies will allow the security manager to keep abreast of the status of such off-site response and adjust planning as appropriate. These are just some of the things that the facility security manager must start to consider as a potential pandemic situation starts to develop in this country. Yesterday’s conference call by DHS is a good first step in acknowledging that critical industries need to start to look at what they are going to do to minimize the impact of the current swine flu situation. DHS and high-risk facilities also need to take a hard look at the potential impacts of a pandemic on security at high-risk chemical facilities.