High-Threat Decisions


Book Description

High-threat decision-making is intrinsic to many domains and carries an individual, organizational, and social responsibility. Tactical and incident commanders make decisions in the high-threat law enforcement context of hostage rescue, armed barricaded suspects, and armed suicidal individuals that can result in successful or catastrophic outcomes. This book describes the experiences and methods of making decisions in these types of extreme environments. The presented research addresses learning strategies that could better prepare leaders for information processing in any high-threat domain, while optimizing speed and accuracy in decision-making. This volume emphasizes the role of adaptive expertise in decision-making, and explains how mental models of recurring patterns are created and retrieved, and why they are necessary for effective situational assessments. This book is ideal for police commanders and executives, emergency response managers, first responders, and criminology researchers. It is also well-suited for professionals seeking further information about improved high-threat decision-making strategies.




Small Groups


Book Description

Research on small groups is highly diverse because investigators who study such groups vary in their disciplinary identifications, theoretical interests, and methodological preferences. The goal of this volume is to capture that diversity, and thereby convey the breadth and excitement of small group research by acquainting students with work on five fundamental aspects of groups. The volume also includes an introductory chapter by the editors which provides an overview of the history of and current state-of-the-art in the field. Together with introductions to each section, discussion questions and suggestions for further reading, make the volume ideal reading for senior undergraduate and graduate students interested in group dynamics.







Risk and Presidential Decision-making


Book Description

This book aims at gauging whether the nature of US foreign policy decision-making has changed after the Cold War as radically as a large body of literature seems to suggest, and develops a new framework to interpret presidential decision-making in foreign policy. It locates the study of risk in US foreign policy in a wider intellectual landscape that draws on contemporary debates in historiography, international relations and Presidential studies. Based on developments in the health and environment literature, the book identifies the President as the ultimate risk-manager, demonstrating how a President is called to perform a delicate balancing act between risks on the domestic/political side and risks on the strategic/international side. Every decision represents a ‘risk vs. risk trade-off,’ in which the management of one ‘target risk’ leads to the development ‘countervailing risks.’ The book applies this framework to the study three major crises in US foreign policy: the Cuban Missile Crisis, the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979, and the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995. Each case-study results from substantial archival research and over twenty interviews with policymakers and academics, including former President Jimmy Carter and former Senator Bob Dole. This book is ideal for postgraduate researchers and academics in US foreign policy, foreign policy decision-making and the US Presidency as well as Departments and Institutes dealing with the study of risk in the social sciences. The case studies will also be of great use to undergraduate students.




Risk Centric Threat Modeling


Book Description

This book introduces the Process for Attack Simulation &Threat Analysis (PASTA) threat modeling methodology. It provides anintroduction to various types of application threat modeling andintroduces a risk-centric methodology aimed at applying securitycountermeasures that are commensurate to the possible impact thatcould be sustained from defined threat models, vulnerabilities,weaknesses, and attack patterns. This book describes how to apply application threat modeling asan advanced preventive form of security. The authors discuss themethodologies, tools, and case studies of successful applicationthreat modeling techniques. Chapter 1 provides an overview ofthreat modeling, while Chapter 2 describes the objectives andbenefits of threat modeling. Chapter 3 focuses on existing threatmodeling approaches, and Chapter 4 discusses integrating threatmodeling within the different types of Software DevelopmentLifecycles (SDLCs). Threat modeling and risk management is thefocus of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 examine Processfor Attack Simulation and Threat Analysis (PASTA). Finally, Chapter8 shows how to use the PASTA risk-centric threat modeling processto analyze the risks of specific threat agents targeting webapplications. This chapter focuses specifically on the webapplication assets that include customer’s confidential dataand business critical functionality that the web applicationprovides. • Provides a detailed walkthrough of the PASTAmethodology alongside software development activities,normally conducted via a standard SDLC process • Offers precise steps to take when combating threats tobusinesses • Examines real-life data breach incidents and lessons forrisk management Risk Centric Threat Modeling: Process for Attack Simulationand Threat Analysis is a resource for software developers,architects, technical risk managers, and seasoned securityprofessionals.




Advanced ICTs for Disaster Management and Threat Detection: Collaborative and Distributed Frameworks


Book Description

"This book offers state-of-the-art information and references for work undertaken in the challenging area of utilizing cutting-edge distributed and collaborative ICT to advance disaster management as a discipline to cope with current and future unforeseen threats"--Provided by publisher.




Review of the Department of Homeland Security's Approach to Risk Analysis


Book Description

The events of September 11, 2001 changed perceptions, rearranged national priorities, and produced significant new government entities, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created in 2003. While the principal mission of DHS is to lead efforts to secure the nation against those forces that wish to do harm, the department also has responsibilities in regard to preparation for and response to other hazards and disasters, such as floods, earthquakes, and other "natural" disasters. Whether in the context of preparedness, response or recovery from terrorism, illegal entry to the country, or natural disasters, DHS is committed to processes and methods that feature risk assessment as a critical component for making better-informed decisions. Review of the Department of Homeland Security's Approach to Risk Analysis explores how DHS is building its capabilities in risk analysis to inform decision making. The department uses risk analysis to inform decisions ranging from high-level policy choices to fine-scale protocols that guide the minute-by-minute actions of DHS employees. Although DHS is responsible for mitigating a range of threats, natural disasters, and pandemics, its risk analysis efforts are weighted heavily toward terrorism. In addition to assessing the capability of DHS risk analysis methods to support decision-making, the book evaluates the quality of the current approach to estimating risk and discusses how to improve current risk analysis procedures. Review of the Department of Homeland Security's Approach to Risk Analysis recommends that DHS continue to build its integrated risk management framework. It also suggests that the department improve the way models are developed and used and follow time-tested scientific practices, among other recommendations.




Psychological Foundations of Attitudes


Book Description

Psychological Foundations of Attitudes presents various approaches and theories about attitudes. The book opens with a chapter on the development of attitude theory from 1930 to 1950. This is followed by separate chapters on the principles of the attitude-reinforcer-discriminative system; a systematic test of a learning theory analysis of interpersonal attraction; a "spread of effect" in attitude formation; Hullian learning theory; and possible origins of learned attitudinal cognitions. Subsequent chapters deal with mechanisms through which attitudes can function as both independent and dependent variables in the attitude-behavior link; and the problem of how people go about applying a summary label to their attitudes and the reciprocal effects that rating has on the content of attitude. The final chapters discuss a commodity theory that relates selective social communication to value formation; the freedoms there are in regard to attitudes; attitude change occasioned by actions which are discrepant from one's previously existing attitudes or values; and the conflict-theory approach to attitude change.




Insider Threat


Book Description

Establishing a new framework for understanding insider risk by focusing on systems of organisation within large enterprises, including public, private, and not-for-profit sectors, this book analyses practices to better assess, prevent, detect, and respond to insider risk and protect assets and public good. Analysing case studies from around the world, the book includes real-world insider threat scenarios to illustrate the outlined framework in the application, as well as to assist accountable entities within organisations to implement the changes required to embed the framework into normal business practices. Based on information, data, applied research, and empirical study undertaken over ten years, across a broad range of government departments and agencies in various countries, the framework presented provides a more accurate and systemic method for identifying insider risk, as well as enhanced and cost-effective approaches to investing in prevention, detection, and response controls and measuring the impact of controls on risk management and financial or other loss. Insider Threat: A Systemic Approach will be of great interest to scholars and students studying white-collar crime, criminal law, public policy and criminology, transnational crime, national security, financial management, international business, and risk management.