Benefit of a Risk Management Program as Applied to Homeland Security Operations

Risk Management and Homeland Security/Homeland and Defense
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The Benefit of a Risk Management Program as Applied to Homeland Security Operations
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) defines risk as an undesirable outcome emanating from an occurrence, event, or incident, as established by its probability and the related implications. The ability to effectively utilize risk management principles helps policymakers make informed decisions concerning the ideal techniques to prioritize efforts in security programs to ensure such efforts target the most vulnerable areas (Rabkin, 2008). Risk management entails specifying the protective measures to implement centered on a well-established risk reduction approach. One of the primary benefits of a risk management program applied to homeland security operations is identifying assets and establishing the most critical ones. In this respect, DHS is perfectly positioned to identify operators and owners of critical assets and thus provide information central to augmenting its ability to evaluate the threats and vulnerabilities and mitigation techniques and track the vital infrastructures’ operational status. Second, a risk management program identifies, characterizes, and appraises threats to select high-priority assets. Homeland security can establish qualifying assets, especially those that, when attacked or destroyed, culminate into catastrophic economic ramifications. The risk management program is central to assessing the vulnerability of priority assets to specified threats. Accordingly, the DHS risk management program is tailored to determine the risks in terms of the anticipated implications of the specific attack categories on given assets (Moteff, 2005). For example, risk management enables the organization to integrate comprehensive information to establish and evaluate the scope and nature of terrorist attacks against the United States (U.S.) to detect and establish terrorist threats.
In addition, the risk management program facilitates the assessment of vulnerabilities and thus establishes whether the assets’ dependencies surpass the immediate operator or owner control under consideration. This is central to ensuring that t...