Brittni,

The Reference Manual to Mitigate Potential Terrorist Attacks Against Buildings is part of the BIPS and serves as a guide to reduce physical damage to components of buildings and related infrastructure and to reduce the number of casualties related to building-focused attacks. The manual focuses on the eight designated sectors from the NIPP by the DHS, including: Banking and Finance, Commercial Facilities, Communications, Critical Manufacturing, Government Facilities, Healthcare and Public Health, Information Technology, and Postal and Shipping. The measures applicable from this manual are for large occupancy buildings. Furthermore, the updated FEMA 426 outlines NIPP-defined activities that speak to corporate leaders and owners of buildings. They are the main audience of this manual, as they are majorly in control of the security going on within their buildings. And not just within their buildings, but the structure of the buildings as well. The manual helps the private sector industry develop and prioritize key missions that will enable their asset protection or restoration. The NIPP provides a unifying structure for the protect efforts of CIKR into a single national program.

Something that the manual also supports is the concept of resilience and continuity of events after an event has occurred. It basically talks about how well a company can recover and withstand an attack. Resiliency is very important, but can be hard to achieve depending on the type of terrorist attack. It is important to estimate what risks there are to the infrastructure, but this provides challenges in itself, as it really is difficult to predict when or when a terrorist may strike. It is common that high-occupancy buildings are larger targets, so it is imperative that security is a priority when dealing with these buildings.

I recently watched the movie Skyscraper with the Rock as its starring actor, and the concept of risk management and protecting infrastructure was a dominant theme in this movie. The building portrayed had next-gen level protections against fire and many other hazards. It also had fail safes in case something did not work according to the first plan. In the movie, this building’s security cost an outrageous amount of money, but in reality, isn’t supreme security worth the money?

It seems that a lot of companies, and people in general, ignore the risks. And perhaps it’s not that they ignore the risks, but that they aren’t as aware as they should be, or they simply don’t believe something terrible would happen to them or their company. People think it will never happen to them, until it does. Security measures against terrorism attacks against high-occupancy buildings need to be implemented at every building or company, for the safety of all those who work there.

7 hours ago

REQUIREMENTS