Corporate Emergency Access System

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The Corporate Emergency Access System (CEAS) is a credentialing program in the United States for a company's critical employees. In the event of a disaster or a serious emergency, these employees can show their CEAS ID cards to first responders and be admitted to their business location. [1] CEAS helps businesses mitigate damage and loss resulting by allowing them rapid access to restricted areas.

Credentialing is the process of establishing the qualifications of licensed medical professionals and assessing their background and legitimacy. Many health care institutions and provider networks conduct their own credentialing, generally through a credentialing specialist or electronic service, with review by a credentialing committee. It may include granting and reviewing specific clinical privileges, and allied health staff membership.

Disaster An event or combination of events resulting in major damage, destruction or death

A disaster is a serious disruption occurring over a relatively short time of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental loss and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources.

CEAS helps businesses mitigate damage and loss by allowing critical employees rapid access to restricted areas. This allows them to rapidly recover essential operations and retrieve assets such as securities and other valuables; vital records, computer hardware and critical equipment; and core IT systems. They can also conduct damage assessments.

Computer hardware physical components of a computer

Computer hardware includes the physical, tangible parts or components of a computer, such as the cabinet, central processing unit, monitor, keyboard, computer data storage, graphics card, sound card, speakers and motherboard. By contrast, software is instructions that can be stored and run by hardware. Hardware is so-termed because it is "hard" or rigid with respect to changes or modifications; whereas software is "soft" because it is easy to update or change. Intermediate between software and hardware is "firmware", which is software that is strongly coupled to the particular hardware of a computer system and thus the most difficult to change but also among the most stable with respect to consistency of interface. The progression from levels of "hardness" to "softness" in computer systems parallels a progression of layers of abstraction in computing.

CEAS was developed in New York State during the 1990s by the Business Network of Emergency Resources, a not-for-profit organization which pioneered this emergency-identification-card-based capability. The CEAS access system has been adopted by Boston and Cambridge in Massachusetts, Chester County and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, Erie, Nassau, and Suffolk counties in New York, New York City, Baltimore and Stamford, Connecticut.

New York (state) State of the United States of America

New York is a state in the Northeastern United States. New York was one of the original thirteen colonies that formed the United States. With an estimated 19.54 million residents in 2018, it is the fourth most populous state. In order to distinguish the state from the city with the same name, it is sometimes referred to as New York State.

Boston Capital city of Massachusetts, United States

Boston is the capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city proper covers 48 square miles (124 km2) with an estimated population of 694,583 in 2018, making it also the most populous city in New England. Boston is the seat of Suffolk County as well, although the county government was disbanded on July 1, 1999. The city is the economic and cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 4.8 million people in 2016 and ranking as the tenth-largest such area in the country. As a combined statistical area (CSA), this wider commuting region is home to some 8.2 million people, making it the sixth most populous in the United States.

Cambridge, Massachusetts City in Massachusetts, United States

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and part of the Boston metropolitan area.

In order for businesses to enroll in CEAS, their local municipalities must adopt the CEAS Program and receive ID cards. The local authorities can implement CEAS following an emergency once immediate threats to life are stabilized. Participating businesses select a pre-determined number of employees to receive CEAS access ID cards based on total employee population.

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An information security audit is an audit on the level of information security in an organization. Within the broad scope of auditing information security there are multiple types of audits, multiple objectives for different audits, etc. Most commonly the controls being audited can be categorized to technical, physical and administrative. Auditing information security covers topics from auditing the physical security of data centers to auditing the logical security of databases and highlights key components to look for and different methods for auditing these areas.

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References

  1. "CEAS" . Retrieved 19 June 2013.