By Michael Hill
Correspondent
“It seems in our profession our successes are rarely celebrated and our shortcomings are often highlighted for all to see,” said New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness Director Chris Rodriguez.
With that, New Jersey’s Homeland Security chief and former CIA manager launched the department’s annual conference titled “Emerging Issues in the Homeland Enterprise.”
And it seems the issues are many as hundreds of men and women from many industries gathered to weigh the challenges they face and to learn new avenues of collaboration.
Linda Doherty is the president of the New Jersey Food Council concerned that her member supermarkets can supply food to 9 million New Jerseyans every day.
“We do planning and we have relationship building and we do collaboration and these events help us build on those relationships that are extremely important to our lifeline industry,” she said.
Mark Giangiulio represents the hotel industry. “We’re very involved in what’s going on with the OHSP [Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness] and we’re trying to see what they want us to do from a private sector standpoint,” he said.
Qareeb Bashir directs Trenton’s Department of Fire and Emergency services. He says he’s dealt with a high-alert threat to the city’s water filtration plant — a designated high hazard target.
“Our profession is such that we have to be prepared for everything. So the types of responses relative to terrorism, we train for those types of things anyway and always have but now they’re more defined,” Bashir said.
Joe Slover works in physical security for Bank of New York Mellon. He says the concerns over cyber security are endless.
“It does keep us up at night, that’s for sure,” he said.
New Jersey’s acting attorney general says state government is the target of constant cyber attacks.
“There are a lot of efforts but not a lot of success, thankfully. But you know cyber is an evolving field so we have to stay out in front of it and stay proactive on it and if we’re sitting still we’re falling behind,” Acting Attorney General John Hoffman said.
At this Homeland Security conference at Monmouth University, experts in the field of jihadists, al-Qaeda and those unmanned aerial systems known as drones shared their concerns about security.
“It’s a scary thought to have somebody loose with a device that literally could take people out and be very stealthy where you’re not going to see it coming,” said NJIT Assistant Vice President of Government and Military Relations William Marshall.
But, retired Brigadier General Marshall says the government is moving fast to legislate the industry, not to constrain or restrain it but to guide it. He says safety and security are paramount — the overall theme at this one-day conference.