COVID-19 is affecting all facets of society today and life as we know it. This pandemic is creating havoc around the world and is being used by threat actors to perpetrate grey zone actions and to infiltrate security vulnerabilities.
In this episode of Vanguard Radio, J. Richard Jones talks with Valarie Findlay, American Society for Evidenced-Based Policing member and a research fellow for the Police Foundation (USA). Valarie has two decades of senior-level expertise in cybersecurity and policing initiatives. She has worked extensively on federal cyber initiatives and is a member of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police eCrimes Cyber Council and AFCEA DC. She has a Masters in Sociology and a Masters in Terrorism Studies with her dissertation addressing the impacts of terrorism on law enforcement in Western Nations.
In a time of crisis, there are a number of areas of potential exposure for malicious threats and non-malicious threats. The latter is more a part of a pandemic. Learn more about how one aspect is affecting other aspects of society, resulting in a broader state of vulnerability.
Hear about grey zone actions that can create vulnerabilities for a nation to be attacked and who it can be used to erode a nation's democracy. These are covert and often hard to detect actions. But how we respond to them is important in maintaining a democracy and the overall stability of a nation. When a country is in a state of crisis or vulnerability like the COVID-19 pandemic, it leaves that nation more susceptible to grey zone actions. The question at that point is, does that nation have the ability to handle additional threats in a state of crisis?
Valarie talks about Prevention, Detection, Response and Recovery strategies and how these can help in a crisis, the inconsistency of messages across social media, how governments need to have a consistent message for the social wellbeing of citizens and result of misinformation as a grey zone action that results in destabilization and phycological impact on people.