CISA and 2020 Hurricane Preparations Webinar

Yesterday the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced that it would be holding a webinar on “Critical Infrastructure Hurricane Response During a Pandemic” next week. The webinar on June 18th will be a joint effort by CISA, FEMA and NOA. It will be held on HSIN Connect, part of the DHS Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN).

According to a mass-email I received yesterday about the event presentations will be made by:

• NOAA Liaison to the National Operations Center

• Divisional Representatives from CISA

• FEMA National Business Emergency Operations Center

An email that I received from a representative at CISA’s Infrastructure Security Compliance Division indicated that ISCD will not be one of the divisions providing presentations. A broader look at chemical facility safety information will most likely be presented by “some of our voluntary-focused colleagues”, probably the  Chemical Sector-Specific Agency (SSA).

There is no information currently available about registration for this webinar. While the HSIN is routinely used for sharing Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) information, unrestricted DHS webinars are frequently held on this site. At this point I do not think that this will be an informationally restricted presentation, that would defeat the purpose.

NOTE: The email reply I received from ISCD contained an interesting ‘new’ (first time I’ve seen it) cybersecurity marking. In the copy of my original email to ISCD that was appended to the reply there was a highlighted text-box that said:

“CAUTION: This email originated from outside of DHS. DO NOT click links or open attachments unless you recognize and/or trust the sender. Contact your component SOC with questions or concerns.”

I have not heard of anyone using this method of spreading malicious links, but I guess that anything is possible. I wonder is CISA is just being proactive with this tool or if it has seen something that they have yet to publicly report.