National Terrorism Advisory System

It seems that my blog earlier today about the ending of the color-coded, Homeland Security Advisory System was well timed. This afternoon I received an email from DHS (a sign up thing on the Private Sector Office web page, not personal contacts) letting me know that Secretary Napolitano would be making a formal announcement on the National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) tomorrow.

Additionally, the Private Sector Office and the Office of Infrastructure Protection will be holding a webinar to fully explain the NTAS on Thursday afternoon from 1:00 to 2:00 pm EDT. While I would expect the information to be made available on-line, here is the webinar information:

Dial-in: 1-888-889-4460

PIN: 6147798

Webinar: https://connect.hsin.gov/ntas_brief_partners/

If you have an HSIN account you can sign in with your normal sign-in information. Otherwise you can opt to sign in as a guest. I doubt that the CFATS RBPS-13 issue will be raised in the presentation, but it would be a good question to ask the briefers.

On a slightly different note, it seems that the TSA Pipeline Security folks have similar issue with their guidance on enhanced security measures. Readers may remember my discussion of the TSA supplemental guidance for HSAS Threat Level Protective Measures back in January. That discussion was based upon the December 2010 document published by TSA. I just received a copy of an April 2011 version of the document targeted to the NTAS.

It is really commendable that the folks at the TSA Pipeline Security Office (a truly miniscule office I’m sure), without an enforceable security program, have managed to update their newer guidance document for the realities of the new terrorism alerting system. I’m sure that the folks at ISCD will be able to get around to doing the same thing when they finish approving the Tier 1 site security plans some time before 2017. Of course, by then, there will be at least two other versions of this alerting system that will have come and gone.