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Press Release

CISA Partners with Secure Community Network to Hold Incident Response Exercise

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WASHINGTON – Yesterday, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) hosted a tabletop exercise in collaboration with the Secure Community Network (SCN). The exercise brought together Jewish community leaders from across the nation, along with federal and state law enforcement and interagency partners to examine how they would act in a notional event focused on threats of violence including scenarios based on current events.

“The threats we face as a nation are vast; people with differing ideologies are constantly looking for ways to interfere with our daily lives and, more importantly, to disrupt our democracy and beliefs,” said CISA Assistant Director for Infrastructure Security Brian Harrell.

“Through strong and proven organizations, such as SCN, the Jewish Community has established itself as the premier group that sets standards for the rest of the faith-based community on incorporating security protocols in their daily operations,” Harrell continued.

For over a decade, DHS has demonstrated its commitment to supporting the Jewish Community by partnering with SCN and its members on a number of initiatives. The majority of these initiatives have centered on three principles: improving threat information sharing, conducting training and exercises, and developing and disseminating technical resource documents.

For example, in 2017, in response to threats against Jewish Community Centers, the Department conducted outreach to executive directors of the Jewish Community Center Association of North America. The Department has also recently conducted various trainings with the Jewish Community, including eight active shooter preparedness workshops, six discussion-based and one operation-based exercises, and two bomb threat management awareness webinars.

Additional training, information and other resources on preventing or mitigating attacks on community organizations are available at https://www.dhs.gov/cisa/hometown-security.

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