The Department of Homeland Security released the Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence to address the changing landscape of security challenges to the nation: These threats have become more complex, more interconnected, more intertwined with technological advances, and closer to home. The nation faces a wider variety of...
New In Focus now available on Ransomware. From the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA): The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has observed an increase in ransomware attacks across the world: See CISA’s Awareness Briefings on Combating Ransomware, Joint Ransomware Statement, and CISA Insights – Ransomware Outbreak. Ransomware is a type of malicious software, or malware,...
In a new research paper from the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), Liesbeth van der Heide, Marieke van der Zwan, and Maarten van Leyenhorst compare risk assessment tools for predicting violent extremism. According to the report, there has been an increase of “violent extremist offenders (VEOs)” in Europe, which has...
The e-book, Hostile Social Manipulation: Present Realities and Emerging Trends, from the RAND Corporation’s Research Report Series, examines the complicated relationship between modern democracies and the real and potential effects of cyber manipulation on their constituents. Focusing specifically on the two most pressing and prominent threats, China and Russia, the report...
The Report on Global Preparedness for Health Emergencies from the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), an extension of the World Health Organization (WHO), is a call-to-action to proactively plan and establish global protocol for when public health emergencies hit. The report points out that many factors that could trigger a...
The Program on Extremism at the George Washington University (GW) released additional papers on Online Violent Extremism as a part of the Legal Perspectives on Tech Series, commissioned in conjunction with the Congressional Counterterrorism Caucus. According to GW, the Program “provides analysis on issues related to violent and non-violent extremism.”...
The United States Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has released a report documenting the costs of the last three government shutdowns. Upon surveying 26 federal agencies, the investigation estimated the overall cost to American taxpayers at nearly $4 billion. The back pay to federal workers...
The 2018 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) reports that violent crime has been trending upward since 2015, a stark reversal from the consistent decline which started in the 1990s. Overall, the survey results present a slow, but steady, rise in violent crimes beginning in 2015. However, the report shows that...
The George Washington University Program on Extremism released three new papers on Online Violent Extremism. All deal with the complicated issue of determining and assigning who bears the legal and moral onus of countering online terrorism. “Leveraging CDA 230 to Counter Online Extremism” by Annemarie Bridy argues “that the scope...
2019 marks the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States. In the September 2019 issue of the CTC Sentinel, Daniel Byman’s feature article, “Eighteen Years On: The War on Terror Comes of Age“, reflects on nearly two decades of war and counterterrorism, and the state of...
