ARE YOU PREPARED?
Faith-based guidance and practice in prevention, protection, interaction, and survival
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Collaborative workshops on assessing risks, mitigating crises, and managing contingencies
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Partner together to provide 24/7 emergency access, consultation, and threat analysis
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NEWS FOR YOU
Homeland Security Committee released their latest Terror Threat Snapshot for July, a monthly assessment of the Committee’s continuing effort to highlight the growing threat America, the West, and the world face from ISIS and other terrorists.
The following are three key points from the report: 1. Europol released its annual Terrorism Situation and Trend Report, which noted an increase in frequency of jihadist attacks with a decrease in sophistication; homegrown terrorists being the primary perpetrators of terror attacks and the vital role that online propaganda and social media play in terror recruitment, radicalization, and fundraising. 2. Army Colonel Thomas Veale described the impact that Operation Roundup has had in Syria, “The increased operational tempo under Operation Roundup includes 225 coalition partner strikes in May. That’s a 304% increase over March and a 123% increase over April strikes. 3. The Russian government reportedly arranged for the departure of radicals by facilitating travel out of Russia, primarily to Turkey. Reports indicate that the Federal Security Service (FSB) targeted men who were radicalized, or had the potential to become radicalized, and provided them with documentation that would allow them to travel to Turkey, and from there south. The apparent counter terror strategy effectively removed experienced militants from within their borders, which could explain the less sophisticated, single actor attacks that Russia has seen in recent years. 
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TIPS & ADVICE
Fact: 72% of American women will likely take a solo trip abroad in 2018.
Fact: Women are often perceived as soft targets, and will generally face a higher level of risk than men.
With that said, the need for purposeful trip-planning has to include personal security. As you begin to plan your long-awaited getaway overseas or short-term mission trip, consider some of these safety tips:
1. Learn as much about that culture as possible. And we aren’t just talking about local restaurants! Research or ask someone who has been there about the typical customs or dress habits of local women. Find out these things before you go, so you can avoid drawing unintended attention towards yourself.
2. Keep track of your luggage and valuables. Choose common colors for your luggage so it doesn’t stand out. Don’t display your first name on ID tags, to avoid advertising that the owner is a female. Consider a purse that can be worn over your neck to avoid an easy grabbing. If you brought along your phone, carry it in your front pocket. Back pockets are prime for picking.
3. If you are staying at a hotel, pick a room above the ground level. First-floor rooms are the most common for break-ins. When selecting a hotel, look at pictures from a street view. Several hotels will misrepresent themselves and their neighborhoods to make a sale.
4. Avoid going places in the dark. Pretty easy to understand, right? Criminals like it when they are harder to be spotted so, if possible, avoid traveling at night or taking “short-cuts”.
5. Trust your intuition. If you think someone is following you, don’t be afraid of appearing rude or paranoid. Make quick eye-contact with the person, to let them know that you see them, while quickly making your way into a nearby store or restaurant. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Traveling can be fun and by taking simple safety steps like these you can more thoroughly enjoy your time away from home. For a better understanding and plenty examples of best practices in travel, check out our online personal security video TRAVELING SAINT. Remember, knowing what to do in a dangerous situation keeps you calm and less impacted, while allowing you to accomplish what you intended to do.
Enjoy your trip!
Over 97 million username and password combinations were stolen this year through Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail. Most of us can agree that passwords are a nuisance. Since each website and most apps require that we log in with one, it forces us to deal with a staggering number of passwords. We can begin to see how it’s easy to mock the people using "12345678" for everything, because creating and recalling strong passwords that are unique to each website is overwhelming. Making strong passwords strong—length, uniqueness, variety of characters—makes them difficult to remember. Reusing passwords across the internet is dangerous too because if one site suffers a security breach, an attacker could access our entire digital life: email, cloud storage, bank accounts, social media, and more. What are we to do?!
Cue the superhero music… Enter the Password Manager
With a password manager, all you need to do is remember one super-strong master password and the password manager handles the rest, generating and saving a unique password for every account needed across the internet. It can even store them locally or have them sync across all of our devices - automatically filling in the form on the chosen websites.
Password managers vary in features, portability, aesthetics, and pricing so do some comparing to suit your needs. A few of the top runners in most security circles, in no particular order, are:
LastPass, Dashlane, KeePass, Sticky Password, and 1Password.
