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SEC Chairman Christopher Cox

At an SEC roundtable that looked at lessons from the credit crisis, Chairman Cox discussed the need for Congress to fill a U.S. regulatory gap and provide statutory authority for government oversight of credit default swaps.

Move Adds Private Sector Expertise to Critical Infrastructure Protection

Scott Greiper, Managing Director of Legend Merchant and Head of the firm’s Convergent Security Group, has been accepted into the FBI InfraGard Alliance. InfraGard brings together vetted practitioners and industry experts from business, academia and government with a common goal to enhance the security of the nation’s critical infrastructure. InfraGard members share information via secure channels with a national network of subject matter experts through their local InfraGard Alliance. Each Alliance is geographically linked with an FBI field office.

By Rob Margetta, CQ Staff

The roiling economy might leave few immediate scars on the larger homeland security market, but experts say the situation could have serious consequences for the small and midsized businesses that drive much of the innovation in the field. Homeland security firms developing new technology and other innovations do not rely on credit, so the recent freeze of business loans is not the problem, according to Scott L. Greiper, managing director at the investment firm Legend Merchant Group. Rather, the issue is that the investment capital those companies rely on is also disappearing. “It’s the most difficult financing environment I’ve ever seen,” said Greiper, who heads The Convergent Security Group, a division of LMG that provides financial and strategic assistance to homeland security-related business. “These companies in large part don’t have the stable revenue bases to drive cash from revenue into research and development.”

America has been failed by its government, and the nation now faces economic and security catastrophes unless its leaders change their ways, Wharton management professor Lawrence G. Hrebiniak concludes in his new book, The Mismanagement of America, Inc. He directs his severest criticism at the government's supervision of the Social Security Trust Fund and an intelligence infrastructure in which various agencies are no better at communicating with each other than they were before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

A corporation is a legal personality, usually used to conduct business. Corporations exist as a product of corporate law, and their rules balance the interests of the shareholders that invest their capital and the employees who contribute their labor. People work together in corporations to produce. In modern times, corporations have become an increasingly dominant part of economic life. People rely on corporations for employment, for their goods and services, for the value of the pensions, for economic growth and social development.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox today unveiled the successor to the agency’s 1980s-era EDGAR database, which will give investors far faster and easier access to key financial information about public companies and mutual funds.The new system is called IDEA, short for Interactive Data Electronic Applications. Based on a completely new architecture being built from the ground up, it will at first supplement and then eventually replace the EDGAR system. The decision to replace EDGAR marks the SEC’s transition from collecting forms and documents to making the information itself freely available to investors to give them better and more up-to-date financial disclosure in a form they can readily use.

Contact: Seamus Hughes

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., and Ranking Member Susan Collins R-Me., Wednesday examined the nature of the threat of nuclear terrorism against the homeland - the intent and capability of terrorists to obtain nuclear materials, build a bomb, transport it, and detonate it.

Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office

GAO investigators succeeded in passing through TSA security screening checkpoints undetected with components for several improvised explosive devices (IED) and an improvised incendiary device (IID) concealed in their carry-on luggage and on their persons. The components for these devices and the items used to conceal the components were commercially available. Specific details regarding the device components and the methods of concealment GAO used during its covert testing are classified by TSA; as such, they are not discussed in this testimony.


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By: Paul Serluco, Homeland Defense Journal

What do captured enemy documents, Internet communities, IEDs and text messaging have in common? They all depend on networks: networks of people, influence and technology. And they’re all subjects of an emerging new discipline called Network Science.

An interview with Dr. Frederick Moxley, Defense Information Systems Agency Fellow and Visiting Professor at the U.S. Military Academy (USMA) follows. He is one of the leaders guiding the development of Network Science and its application to today’s defense challenges. We interviewed Dr. Moxley regarding the new Network Science Center being stood up at West Point and the results already achieved.

By Joseph D. Lipchitz, Mintz Levin's Homeland Security Practice Group

In June 2007, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) finalized its Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards and within the next several months, DHS is expected to finalize its list of Chemicals of Interest, which will trigger significant reporting consequences for a myriad of businesses that manufacture, use, store, or transport a wide-range of chemicals, including some of the most commonly used chemicals in manufacturing, processing, construction, and printing.

By Joseph D. Lipchitz & Noah C. Shaw

The incidence of patent litigation is increasing dramatically, and the expanding and highly competitive homeland security industry is no exception to this trend. Every homeland security business should be aware of the powerful statutory protections that 28 U.S.C. § 1498 (‘‘Section 1498’’) provides against attempts to use claims of alleged patent infringement to interfere with the provision of goods and services to the U.S. government.

By Jonah Czerwinski

Conflicting opinions emerging these days about the state of our homeland security. Walter Pincus and Joby Warrick noted in their coverage of official statements yesterday that while Secretary Chertoff was explaining to the Senate how the threat of terrorism is as bad as it was six years ago, the President’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor, Fran Townsend, struck a different chord in an interview with Wolf Blitzer by calling al Qaeda’s leader an “impotent… man on the run from a cave.” Where to go from here with a threat assessment like this?

By Jonah Czerwinski

GAO just released three studies. The first reviews FBI’s management of acquiring and implementing Sentinel, which is a program slated to replace and improve upon the FBI’s failed Virtual Case File project. The Sentinel program is critical to FBI’s need to modernize case management and information sharing obligations. Think of this as a case of the opposite of the Deepwater project run by Lockheed for the Coast Guard: this GAO report actually focuses on how well the project is going. For GAO to publish something positive is a rarity. This report highlights “best practices” used by FBI to implement Sentinel with IBM. Complete report available here.

A Convergent Security Group Market Report By: Scott Greiper and Mark Sauter

The U.S. ground transportation system -- rail, mass transit, and trucking – affects every American every day. At work and at home, and during the trip in between, our nation depends upon the safe and efficient operation of the transportation industry. Some 6,000 transit systems carry about 14 million Americans each weekday on buses, subways, ferries, and light rail – far exceeding the number of passengers on airplanes.

By Jonah Czerwinski on June 25, 2007

Just coming up for air and noticed a new release from the Government Accountability Office taking DHS to task on yet another front. This time the S&T Directorate is in its cross hairs. Seems the full-speed-ahead approach taken by Under Secretary (ADM) Cohen left some knotty little details undone. According to GAO:

The S&T fiscal year 2007 expenditure plan, including related documentation and other information provided by program officials, did not fully satisfy the conditions set forth in the Appropriations Act.

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Novavax, Inc. (NASDAQ: NVAX) is a product development company focused on the research, development and commercialization of its proprietary drug delivery products, vaccines and biological technologies. The company has transitioned from focusing on developing a pipeline of women's health pharmaceuticals to conducting research and development on proprietary formulations of FDA -approved drugs and on next-generation vaccines and biologicals for a variety of infectious diseases. Novavax’ strategy is to leverage its technologies such as Virus-Like Particles (VLP) and developing and licensing Micellar Nanoparticle (MNP) candidates of marketed FDA approved drugs.