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Volume 21 — Issue 30 | July 29, 2021

Fire and EMS health and wellness resources from the National Volunteer Fire Council

Emergency responders face a variety of physical and behavioral health challenges every day. Taking care of your body and mind is crucial in ensuring you're ready to respond to the next emergency. The National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC) provides free tools and resources to help departments foster a safety culture and support the mental and physical health of their members.

The NVFC is highlighting two resources this month from its Psychologically Healthy Fire Departments (PHFD) initiative, which is part of its Share the Load program for firefighters and EMS providers.

First, the NVFC has developed a Psychologically Healthy Fire Departments: Implementation Toolkit. This Toolkit covers six key categories for psychological health and wellness: member involvement, health and safety, member growth and development, work-life balance, member recognition, and effective communication. Each category is examined along with specific actions that can be taken, special issues to consider, case studies from successful departments, and additional resources.

The NVFC plans to offer training for fire service leaders on the Implementation Toolkit soon.

Second, the NVFC maintains a directory of behavioral health professionals who are vetted as either having firsthand experience with the fire and emergency services or who have completed a training course through the Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance to educate them on the fire service and the specific challenges they face. In addition to licensed healthcare professionals, the directory also includes other resources for assistance such as chaplains and peer support specialists.

The Directory of Behavioral Health Professionals is organized by state, and the NFVC’s webpage for this directory provides an interactive map where you can quickly and easily locate a provider in your area. This directory is updated monthly as more providers are added. The latest update was July 1, 2021.

The NVFC provides the resources in its Psychologically Healthy Fire Departments (PHFD) initiative to the fire and EMS community in partnership with the Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance and the American Psychological Association, and with support from a Fire Prevention and Safety Grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

For more information on these resources, visit the NVFC’s Psychologically Healthy Fire Departments webpage.

(Source: NVFC)

Highlights

Fire and EMS health and wellness resources from the National Volunteer Fire Council

Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association discusses response to Champlain Tower collapse

FBI releases annual report, Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2020

Webinar: Crisis stabilization & scene management: A roadmap to de-escalation, field dynamics and decision making using the R.O.A.R model

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.

Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association discusses response to Champlain Tower collapse

As part of its 2021 Metro Chiefs Conference, on July 8, the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association conducted a webinar discussing the response to the Champlain Tower collapse in Surfside, Florida. The session was recorded for the public. 

This presentation is worth a listen for anyone interested in hearing directly from those who had a role in leading this large-scale emergency response.

A first-hand account of the response from an incident management perspective was presented by the Emergency Support Function (ESF) 4 and 9 Deputy Coordinator from Florida’s State Fire Marshal’s Office and International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) Committee Chair. This presentation reviews the stages of the incident as it unfolded, covering everything from initial dispatch and size-up to state and federal coordination, and challenges faced during the response.

The presentation also includes a briefing on NIST’s role in investigating the collapse, the potential future impacts to building codes and standards resulting from NIST’s investigation, and a discussion on the role of fire service leaders in implementing any future recommendations from NIST. This discussion highlights two tools that fire service leaders can use to facilitate changes to building codes and standards: 1) the NFPA’s Fire and Life Safety Ecosystem; and 2) a new program called Confidential Reporting on Structural Safety (CROSS), from the American Society of Civil Engineers. CROSS is a system to improve standards of practice through learning from structural failures and incidents.

A question and answer session follows the presentations, covering additional details on the response.

To listen to this presentation and other recorded presentations from the 2021 Metro Chiefs Conference, visit the National Fire Protection Association’s (NFPA’s) Metropolitan Fire Chiefs page.

(Source: NFPA)

FBI releases annual report, Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2020

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released its annual report, Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2020 earlier this month.

The FBI defines an active shooter as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. Implicit in this definition is the shooter’s use of a firearm. The active aspect of the definition implies the ongoing nature of an incident, and thus the potential for the response to affect the outcome. Given these criteria for active shooter incidents, the report does not encompass all gun-related shootings occurring in 2020, such as gang-related violence, drug violence, or self-defense.

The FBI has designated 40 shootings in 2020 as active shooter incidents. The report includes brief narrative summaries of all 40 of these incidents, as well as summary statistics characterizing the incidents.

Some notable statistics include:

• The number of active shooter incidents in 2020 (40 incidents) has been consistently increasing since 2016 and represents a 100% increase from 2016 (20 incidents).
• There were 38 fatalities from active shooter incidents in 2020. This is the lowest number of fatalities in five years.
• 5 of the 40 incidents met the criteria cited in the federal definition of mass killings, compared to 13 incidents that met these criteria in 2019.
• 1 law enforcement officer was killed; 11 law enforcement officers were wounded.
• Of the 42 active shooters in 2020: 4 were killed by law enforcement, 7 committed suicide, 2 were killed by a citizen, 24 were apprehended by law enforcement, and 5 are still at large.
• 24 of the 40 active shooter incidents occurred in areas of commerce, resulting in 31 killed and 81 wounded.
• None of the total 40 incidents occurred in educational environments, health care facilities, or houses of worship.

This is the sixth report of its kind published since 2014. All past reports and more active shooter incident resources can be found on the FBI’s Active Shooter webpage.

(Source: FBI)

Webinar: Crisis stabilization & scene management: A roadmap to de-escalation, field dynamics and decision making using the R.O.A.R model

The International Public Safety Association (IPSA) is hosting a webinar on August 11 from 1 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. EST entitled Crisis stabilization & scene management: A roadmap to de-escalation, field dynamics and decision making using the R.O.A.R model.

The Respond-Observe-Assess-React (ROAR) model was originally developed in 2016 for members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The model is considered a roadmap to de-escalation (crisis stabilization), field dynamics and decision making.

ROAR is relevant to law enforcement and non-law enforcement responders, such as community outreach workers, mental health professionals and security personnel. This response model has been specifically adapted to special populations and multiple versions exist. ROAR is a generalizable model and is also being explored for application to situations involving domestic violence and human trafficking.

All attendees will receive a Certificate of Attendance and will have access to the webinar recordings, regardless of IPSA membership status. The webinar is free to attend. To register, visit IPSA’s registration page for this event.

(Source: IPSA)

Cyber Information and Incident Assistance Links

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

IdentityTheft.gov

IC3

Cybercrime Support Network

General Information
Links

FTC scam list

CISA alerts

Law Enforcement Cyber Center

TLP Information

CISA Alert (AA21-209A): Top Routinely Exploited Vulnerabilities

This Joint Cybersecurity Advisory was coauthored by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

This advisory provides details on the top 30 vulnerabilities—primarily Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs)—routinely exploited by malicious cyber actors in 2020 and those being widely exploited thus far in 2021. 

Four of the most targeted vulnerabilities in 2020 affected remote work, VPNs, or cloud-based technologies.

(Source: CISA)

MDBR stops ransomware, phishing, malware, and more

U.S. State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT) government organizations, schools, and hospitals are becoming increasingly reliant on technology. The Center for Internet Security's (CIS's) Malicious Domain Blocking and Reporting (MDBR) service has been protecting these entities from being targets of ransomware, malware, and phishing attacks. One year since its inception in July 2020, MDBR has blocked more than 1.5 billion requests to known bad web domains for public sector organizations.

Adoption of this service continues to grow as the service can be implemented within 15 minutes or less and requires virtually no maintenance as CIS and Akamai fully maintain the systems required.

Existing MS- and EI-ISAC members can sign up for no-cost MDBR by registering here. If your organization isn’t yet an MS-ISAC or EI-ISAC member, you’ll be asked to join first.

(Source: Center for Internet Security)

DHS announces new cybersecurity requirements for critical pipeline owners and operators

On July 20, in response to the ongoing cybersecurity threat to pipeline systems, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’) Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced the issuance of a second Security Directive that requires owners and operators of TSA-designated critical pipelines that transport hazardous liquids and natural gas to implement a number of urgently needed protections against cyber intrusions.

This Security Directive requires owners and operators of TSA-designated critical pipelines to implement specific mitigation measures to protect against ransomware attacks and other known threats to information technology and operational technology systems, develop and implement a cybersecurity contingency and recovery plan, and conduct a cybersecurity architecture design review.

This is the second Security Directive that TSA has issued to the pipeline sector this year, building upon an initial Security Directive that TSA issued in May 2021 following the ransomware attack on a major petroleum pipeline.  

(Source: DHS)

Google is using machine learning to stop DDoS attacks

Google has revealed a preview of a new machine-learning program from Cloud Armor called Adaptive Protection. The machine-learning-powered tool detects and protects enterprise applications from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The same technology has been implemented in Project Shield, a free service offered by Google that aims to protect human rights, government, and media organizations against harmful DDoS attacks. In the past, Google has been effective in blocking huge DDoS attacks, including one in 2017 that measured in at 2.56 Tbps. Google eventually traced the attack back to a Beijing-backed attacker.

The new project was announced in November as part of its DDoS defense and web application firewall service that allows Google customers to use the same technology the company uses to protect itself.

The public preview allows Google Cloud customers to test out the functionality of the product.

(Source: OODA Loop)

Kaseya obtains universal decryptor key for recent REvil ransomware attacks

Hit by a severe cyberattack earlier this month, IT enterprise firm Kaseya said on Thursday, July 22, that it obtained a universal decryptor key for recent victims of the REvil ransomware. The Kaseya Senior Vice President of corporate marketing said the company obtained the key on Wednesday and that it does work. The Senior Vice President wouldn't reveal any details as to how or where it was obtained other than to say that it came from a trusted third party.

The company said it was working to help victims affected by the ransomware attack and that customers impacted by the incident would be contacted by Kaseya representatives.

(Source: Tech Republic)

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.

Disclaimer of Endorsement:
The appearance of external hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement of the linked websites or the information, products or services contained therein. Reference to any specific commercial products, process or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation or favoring by the EMR-ISAC or the U.S. government.

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