In mid-August, the Secure Community Network (SCN) announced an extensive expansion of the threat management and information-sharing capabilities for the Jewish community. Currently, SCN’s analytical capabilities are enabled through a single location – Chicago, IL. When you report incidents to me, I feed that information to a cadre of analysts that sit in the Jewish Security Operations Command Center (JSOCC) at the SCN offices. They research the person or issue and provide me with the intelligence that I use to assess whether that thing is a threat.  The system works well, though their workload is extremely heavy. A regional threat center system would mean analysts more attuned to the specific needs of the western and/or northwestern federations.

I’ve written previously about the efforts by SCN to ensure every Jewish community has access to security professionals, and that effort is essentially complete, while still expanding. The next step in the vision is the development of additional analytical components. SCN has achieved an initial step, the launch of the first two of eleven planned Regional Threat Centers. These hubs — located in Ohio and Florida — will be directly connected to SCN’s national technology, data platforms, and analysts. SCN’s Regional Threat Capability program has three goals:

Scale and share SCN’s threat identification, data, and technology capabilities so that local Federations and partners plug in to continuously understand threats in their own communities;

Unify regional and national security resources, including Jewish Federation-based as well as other key partner security programs, to build efficient, coordinated regional threat management and information-sharing hubs; and

Eliminate “information islands” by creating one shared national database and Jewish Federations and organizations, partners, and law enforcement at every level.

The launch of the first two Regional Threat Centers marks a major enhancement of the Jewish community’s threat-management and information-sharing network. Staffed by trained analysts, each Regional Threat Center links local capabilities and expertise to SCN’s analytic capabilities to enable continuous and multi-directional sharing of threats from across the country.

In Ohio, SCN is partnering with the Ohio Threat Management Center, a consortium of eight Jewish Federations (representing all the major cities in Ohio) working together to coordinate threat monitoring, protection, and response across the state. In Florida, the Regional Threat Center is being established across South Florida, in partnership with the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, the Jewish Federation of Broward County, the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County, and the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County.

The Regional Threat Center model draws from the Fusion Centers developed by the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and U.S. Department of Homeland Security after 9/11; a structure designed to break down silos, facilitate information sharing, and coordinate security activities across agencies and jurisdictions. By applying this proven approach to the Jewish community’s security infrastructure, SCN and its partners ensure that information gathered at the local, regional, and national levels is centralized, analyzed, acted upon, and then shared across communities in real time. The Regional Threat Centers will also strengthen coordination with local, state, and regionally located law enforcement and public safety partners.

SCN plans to partner with Federations, key partners, and donors to open nine additional Regional Threat Centers. The Regional Threat Centers will be strategically located to cover all major Jewish population centers in the U.S. and to make it easy for organizations to join the network. So stay tuned! We will soon have a Pacific Northwest- or Western-focused analytical center supporting us.