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Volume 21 — Issue 48 | December 9, 2021

IAFC releases update to Yellow Ribbon Report on behavioral health and wellness

Last month, the International Association of Fire Chiefs’ (IAFC) Volunteer and Combination Officers Section (VCOS) released the 2021 Yellow Ribbon Report Update: Best Practices in Behavioral Wellness for Emergency Responders.

It is a sad and worrying fact that more firefighters die from suicide each year than in the line-of-duty, according to the Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance, and many suicides are likely unreported. The original Yellow Ribbon Report was released in 2017, but based on feedback that more life-saving information and guidance was needed, the IAFC VCOS compiled this completely new document as a supplement to the original.

The 2021 Yellow Ribbon Report Update is intended for all ranks of the fire and emergency services.

The report’s contributors recognize that behavioral wellness is a very extensive issue that many fire departments feel overwhelmed by, and they recommend breaking the report into smaller pieces and focusing on a few areas at a time. This approach will allow department leaders to identify a few short- and long-term actions that are most suited to their department’s behavioral health needs. Department leaders can use the new set of eleven best practices in the report to help normalize the mental health impacts of fire and emergency service vocations, encourage a culture supporting mental wellness, establish impactful behavioral health programs, and more. 

The “how-to” approach of the best practices in the report is supplemented by implementation tips and a summary of survey results on what agencies have been doing to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on their personnel’s behavioral wellness.

The report offers solutions and recommendations that can directly help firefighters and responders. It suggests seven approaches or tools, referred to as lifesaving “antidotes.” These seven antidotes are: resilience, emotional intelligence, positive intelligence, relationship strengthening, post-traumatic growth, tools to measure and reduce stressors, and an emotional tactical worksheet. Each antidote in the report is supported by additional resources.

This publication aims to raise awareness by educating everyone about risk factors that can lead to declining mental wellness, such as complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), compassion fatigue, acute stress disorder, gaslighting, toxic work environments, and learned helplessness. These risk factors are highlighted as six behavioral wellness issues, and the report explains how each of these issues are relevant to the fire and emergency services.

All fire departments and other responder agencies are encouraged to share this report with departmental leadership, including your peer support team, chaplain, and employee assistance program. The 2021 Yellow Ribbon Report Update can be viewed and downloaded on IAFC’s website.

(Source: IAFC)

Highlights

IAFC releases update to Yellow Ribbon Report on behavioral health and wellness

NFPA releases new NFPA 470 hazardous materials standard as part of its standards consolidation project

CISA releases Infrastructure Dependency Primer to support infrastructure resilience planning

New virtual training on identification and treatment of sepsis in disaster settings

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.

NFPA releases new NFPA 470 hazardous materials standard as part of its standards consolidation project

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) is a global, self-funded, nonprofit organization, devoted to eliminating death, injury, property and economic loss due to fire, electrical and related hazards.

The NFPA currently publishes more than 300 codes and standards, and about one third of these directly address emergency response and responder safety. These standards help govern responder training, professional qualifications, personal protective equipment, health and safety, and more.

In January 2020, the NFPA launched its Emergency Response and Responder Safety (ERRS) Consolidation Project, to condense this subset of roughly 100 ERRS standards into a more manageable, smaller set of about 30 documents, organized topically. The consolidation project will streamline the usability of the ERRS standards and will facilitate coordination among Technical Committees overseeing related codes and standards. All ERRS documents were scheduled for consolidation in five groups, to be addressed in group order over the course of five years.

The first set of standards from Group 1 has recently been released, consolidating 15 separate codes and standards into just five documents.

Among these first five consolidated documents is NFPA 470: Hazardous Materials/Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Standard for Responders. NFPA 470 was ideally suited to be one of the first to consolidate, as the three separate standards that comprise it were overseen by a single technical committee.

Two training competency standards and one professional qualifications standard were combined into the new NFPA 470:

• NFPA 472: Standard for Competence of Responders to Hazardous Materials/Weapons of Mass Destruction Incidents.
• NFPA 473: Standard for Competencies for EMS Personnel Responding to Hazardous Materials/Weapons of Mass Destruction Incidents.
• NFPA 1072: Standard for Hazardous Materials/Weapons of Mass Destruction Emergency Response Personnel Professional Qualifications.

In an NFPA podcast interview last month, the chair of the NFPA Technical Committee for the Hazardous Materials/WMD Standard for Responders stated that the new NFPA 470 was not a simple consolidation, but was also a content update of the three legacy standards. NFPA documents are revised in three-year cycles, and this process will be maintained after the consolidation.

NFPA 470 is available now in electronic and hardcopy formats. To learn more about the NFPA’s ERRS Consolidation Project and the schedule for releases of additional consolidated standards, visit the NFPA’s ERRS page and check out the recent NFPA podcast.

(Source: NFPA)

CISA releases Infrastructure Dependency Primer to support infrastructure resilience planning

In October, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released its Infrastructure Resilience Planning Framework (IRPF), a flexible framework that can be used by planners in state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) governments and regional planning commissions, and by infrastructure owners and large manufacturing clusters to help identify critical infrastructure, understand interconnected infrastructure systems, assess related risks, and develop and implement resilience solutions.

To supplement the IRPF, in November CISA released an Infrastructure Dependency Primer (IDP). The IDP contains a series of short videos, animations, interactive graphics, and guidance to address fundamental concepts related to infrastructure, dependencies, and resilience planning. The IDP is intended to help SLTT planners and decisionmakers better understand how infrastructure dependencies can impact community risk and resilience and how to incorporate that knowledge into ongoing community planning.

The IDP is organized into three main sections, which provide basic instruction on important topics:

• LEARN: Essential community functions, enabling infrastructure systems, and infrastructure dependencies.
• PLAN: Resilience, the role of infrastructure stakeholders in planning processes, and methods for incorporating dependencies into planning.
• IMPLEMENT: Actions for improving resilience, case study examples, and available resources.

CISA’s IRPF and the new IDP are developed as part of its Infrastructure Development and Recovery (IDR) Program. The IDR Program works with federal and SLTT government officials and infrastructure owners and operators to plan, design, and implement solutions that enhance the security and resilience of critical infrastructure against a variety of threats.

(Source: CISA)

New virtual training on identification and treatment of sepsis in disaster settings

New virtual training on identification and treatment of sepsis in disaster settings

Medical responders have a new resource at their disposal to help in identifying and treating sepsis patients in austere environments: a 70-minute online training module entitled Disaster Medicine: Sepsis. The training is intended to address a gap in traditional disaster medicine training to healthcare providers: education on the recognition and management of patients at risk of or presenting with sepsis.

Any infection can lead to sepsis – a bacterial infection, seasonal influenza, or SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Sepsis is a medical emergency, and timely recognition and treatment of sepsis, whether bacterial or viral in origin, is key to saving lives.

Sepsis is also an important public health issue. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports more than 270,000 lives are lost to sepsis each year in the United States. In years with major public health events, like COVID-19 that can lead to viral sepsis, those numbers can climb much higher. Furthermore, a landmark study published in Critical Care Medicine in March 2020, found that even before the COVID-19 pandemic, sepsis was increasing, especially among older Americans.

According to the CDC, nearly 87% of sepsis cases originate outside the hospital. Therefore, it is critical to recognize these patients early in these settings. Emergency medical responders and those who practice disaster medicine play an important role in identifying patients at risk of developing sepsis, recognizing the signs of sepsis, and taking appropriate action.

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the Sepsis Alliance collaborated with experts from the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS’) Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) and the CDC in developing the 70-minute “Disaster Medicine: Sepsis” training module. The training includes expert commentary from ASPR, BARDA, CDC, and the Department of Defense.

Under the austere, resource-limited conditions typical of disaster zones, the clinical identification and management of sepsis can be more challenging. By focusing on disaster scenarios, the training emphasizes the identification, screening, stabilization, and evacuation of those suspected of developing sepsis and septic patients within non-traditional clinical environments.

The training is targeted to providers in the field. It has been designed to meet the educational needs of emergency responders, disaster medicine teams, emergency planners, facility managers, occupational health and safety personnel, nurses, physicians, pharmacists, and other healthcare staff responsible for triage in disaster settings.

Disaster Medicine: Sepsis is free but requires registration. Visit the Sepsis Alliance Institute for more information and to register for the course.

(Sources: HHS ASPR, Sepsis Alliance Institute)

Cyber Information and Incident Assistance Links

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

IdentityTheft.gov

IC3

Cybercrime Support Network

General Information
Links

StopRansomware.gov

FTC scam list

CISA alerts

Law Enforcement Cyber Center

TLP Information

CISA and FBI release alert on active exploitation of CVE-2021-44077 in Zoho ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus

CISA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory identifying active exploitation of a vulnerability—CVE-2021-44077—in Zoho ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus. CVE-2021-44077 is an unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability that affects all ServiceDesk Plus versions up to, and including, version 11305.

This vulnerability was addressed by the update released by Zoho on September 16, 2021 for ServiceDesk Plus versions 11306 and above. Zoho has set up a security response plan center that provides additional details, a downloadable tool that can be run on potentially affected systems, and a remediation guide.

CISA encourages organizations to review the joint Cybersecurity Advisory and apply the recommended mitigations immediately.

(Source: CISA, FBI)

NSA guidance: Zero trust applied to 5G cloud infrastructure

The Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council (CIPAC) Cross Sector Enduring Security Framework (ESF) Working Group is an industry and government partnership which drives cybersecurity advancement against top cyber threats. The ESF Working Group recently developed four action-oriented documents to provide guidance on how to move toward zero trust in support of securing 5G. The National Security Agency (NSA) and CISA have published the first three parts of the four-part series, Security Guidance for 5G Cloud Infrastructures.

Zero trust may seem overwhelming for many. These documents are aimed at breaking down the important aspects for cloud-hosted environments supporting 5G infrastructures. However, much of the guidance can be applied to any virtual environment consisting of containers and pods with Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and TEE hardware.

(Source: Center for Internet Security)

Webinars: SLTT feedback - the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program

During the next two weeks, the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) will be hosting webinars to solicit stakeholder input and perspective from the SLTT Community regarding the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program recently signed into law by the President on Nov. 15. These calls are being scheduled during this compressed time period in order to allow your input to impact the rapidly progressing DHS/CISA program implementation timeline.

The MS-ISAC encourage all interested members of state, local, and tribal communities to join at any time during any of the sessions listed below:

• Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - 12:00 p.m. EST
• Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - 10:00 a.m. EST
• Friday, December 17, 2021 - 1:00 p.m. EST

(Source: MS-ISAC)

SolarWinds hackers targeting government and business entities worldwide

Nobelium, the threat actor attributed to the massive SolarWinds supply chain compromise, has been once again linked to a series of attacks targeting multiple cloud solution providers, services, and reseller companies, as the hacking group continues to refine and retool its tactics at an alarming pace in response to public disclosures.

The intrusions, which are being tracked by Mandiant under two different activity clusters UNC3004 and UNC2652, are both associated with UNC2452, an uncategorized threat group that has since been tied to the Russian intelligence service. UNC2652, in particular, has been observed targeting diplomatic entities with phishing emails containing HTML attachments with malicious JavaScript, ultimately dropping a Cobalt Strike Beacon onto the infected devices.

(Source: The Hacker News)

Cyberattack causes significant disruption at Colorado electric utility

The Delta-Montrose Electric Association (DMEA) is a member-owned and locally controlled rural electric cooperative that serves more than 34,000 customers in Colorado’s Montrose, Delta, and Gunnison counties. It is part of Touchstone Energy Cooperatives, a cooperative federation that has over 750 members across the United States.

DMEA last week revealed that it had discovered a breach of its internal network on November 7. DMEA’s CEO told local news outlets that the cyberattack led to 90% of internal controls and systems becoming corrupted, broken or disabled, and claimed that a majority of historical data dating back more than 20 years was lost.

(Source: Security Week)

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

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