About the Division of Homeland Security
The Division of Homeland Security is comprised of two areas: Emergency Management and the Statewide Information and Analysis Center. The following is a brief description of what these two areas are responsible for.
Emergency Management
Floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, severe storms, landslides, droughts, hazardous material spills, search and rescue. These are just a few examples of emergencies in Utah in which the Division of Homeland Security (HLS) has played an active role. But what does the agency do when there isn't a disaster?
HLS coordinates emergency management efforts between federal, state and local governments. These efforts include preparedness, recovery, response and mitigation.
Public safety professionals at HLS include experts in emergency planning, training, exercise, investigations, communications, automation, hazardous material response and much more.
HLS prepares individuals and communities for disasters through outreach and training programs. The division trains nearly 1,000 emergency responders annually in areas such as domestic preparedness, hazardous material, the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program, professional development and others.
Thousands of Utahans receive emergency preparedness education material from HLS. This information helps families prepare to be self-reliant during a disaster situation.
But that is not all we do. HLS also administers various ongoing programs that make Utah a safer, better place to live.
About SIAC (Statewide Information & Analysis Center)
410 West 9800 South, Suite 370
Sandy, Utah 84070
(801) 256-2360
email: SIAC@utah.gov
Homeland Security Criminal Tipline 1-866-473-2873
Mission Satement:
The Utah Statewide Information & Analysis Center (SIAC) is a public safety partnership designed to appropriately collect, analyze, and disseminate intelligence to enhance the protection of Utah’s citizens, communities, and critical infrastructure.
The SIAC is the state’s intelligence fusion center: a collaborative effort of two or more agencies that provide resources, expertise and information for analysis, with the goal of maximizing their ability to detect, prevent, investigate, and respond to criminal and terrorist activity.
The SIAC has three major operational areas:
- Intelligence Analysis and Investigative Case Support
- The Intelligence Liaison Officer Program
- Critical Infrastructure Protection
Intelligence Analysis and Investigative Case Support
The SIAC’s Intelligence Analysts evaluate the global threat environment in relation to both criminal activity and potential targets of criminals within the state of Utah, and produce strategic intelligence products that help Utah’s law enforcement and public safety executives make more informed decisions.
Additionally, the SIAC’s Criminal Information Specialists provide investigate case support services to all law enforcement agencies in Utah. Such support includes: background checks, criminal history reports, telephone toll analysis, timelines, link analysis and association charts, GIS mapping, and information-sharing services.
Intelligence Liaison Officer Program
The SIAC’s Intelligence Liaison Officer (ILO) Program is a network of Utah’s public safety personnel focused on sharing criminal, risk, and threat-related information. It provides the necessary framework to contribute information gathered at the local level to a central point for collection, collation and analysis (SIAC).
The SIAC is responsible for producing actionable intelligence based upon information received from various sources – to include the SIAC’s numerous ILOs – and leveraging the ILO framework to ensure that the intelligence reaches a point within each local agency that is responsible for formulating public safety-related decisions.
The SIAC aims to have at least one Intelligence Liaison Officer in every law enforcement agency in Utah, and is working to expand the program to all public safety disciplines.
Critical Infrastructure Protection Program
The SIAC coordinates a local-level homeland security program – titled Asynchronous Critical Infrastructure Protection (ACIP) – that provides local law enforcement an independent ability to proactively protect their community’s critical infrastructure. Through the ACIP program the SIAC collaborates with individual jurisdictions for enhancing their security posture as it pertains to Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP).
The SIAC’s Critical Infrastructure Protection program engages the law enforcement, public safety and private sector communities in partnerships to develop greater knowledge of Utah’s risks, threats, and vulnerabilities. Furthermore, the SIAC seeks to coordinate with these stakeholders to better prepare, prevent, respond and recover from both man-made (criminal) and naturally occurring disastrous events.
Some of the SIAC’s primary focus areas are as follows:
- Intelligence Analysis
- Investigative Case Support
- Risk and Threat Assessment
- Organized Crime &Gang Analysis
- Counter-Narcotics/Drug Trafficking
- Counter-Terrorism
- Homeland Security Risk Mitigation
- Fraud/Identity Theft Analysis
- Visual Analytic Presentation
Privacy, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Protection
All intelligence activities carried out at the SIAC are to be performed within the boundaries established by the United States Constitution, and all Federal, State, Local, and SIAC policies and procedures; all information collected, researched, stored, analyzed, and shared must be done in such as way as to vigilantly uphold the privacy rights and civil liberties granted to United States citizens.
What is Intelligence?
The product of an analytic process that provides an integrated perspective to disparate information, intended to provide meaningful and trustworthy direction to policy makers and decision makers.
What is a Fusion Center?
A fusion center is an effective and efficient mechanism to exchange information and intelligence, maximize resources, streamline operations, and improve the ability to fight crime and terrorism by analyzing data from a variety of sources. Fusion centers have been created within state and local governments to foster both collaboration and the exchange of intelligence between law enforcement, first responders, public health, critical infrastructure (private sector), and other agencies involved in crime suppression, homeland security, and counterterrorism from all agencies and levels of government
Critical Infrastructure is defined as: systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the State of Utah and the United States, that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national and state economic security, national of statewide public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.
Key resources are defined as: publicly or privately controlled resources essential to the minimal operations of the economy and government.
