Homeland security is an American national security term for "the national effort to ensure a homeland that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and other hazards where American interests, aspirations, and ways of life can thrive" to the "national effort to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, reduce the vulnerability of the U.S. to terrorism, and minimize the damage from attacks that do occur." According to an official work published by the Congressional Research Service in 2013, the "Homeland security" term's definition has varied over time.
Counterterrorism, also known as anti-terrorism, relates to the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, law enforcement, businesses, and intelligence agencies use to combat or eliminate terrorism.
Crisis management is the process by which an organization deals with a disruptive and unexpected event that threatens to harm the organization or its stakeholders. The study of crisis management originated with large-scale industrial and environmental disasters in the 1980s. It is considered to be the most important process in public relations.
Cyberterrorism is the use of the Internet to conduct violent acts that result in, or threaten, the loss of life or significant bodily harm, in order to achieve political or ideological gains through threat or intimidation. Acts of deliberate, large-scale disruption of computer networks, especially of personal computers attached to the Internet by means of tools such as computer viruses, computer worms, phishing, malicious software, hardware methods, programming scripts can all be forms of internet terrorism. Cyberterrorism is a controversial term. Some authors opt for a very narrow definition, relating to deployment by known terrorist organizations of disruption attacks against information systems for the primary purpose of creating alarm, panic, or physical disruption. Other authors prefer a broader definition, which includes cybercrime. Participating in a cyberattack affects the terror threat perception, even if it isn't done with a violent approach. By some definitions, it might be difficult to distinguish which instances of online activities are cyberterrorism or cybercrime.
Terrorism and mass attacks in Canada includes acts of terrorism, as well as mass shootings, vehicle-ramming attacks, mass stabbings, and other such acts committed in Canada that people may associate with terroristic tactics but have not been classified as terrorism by the Canadian legal system.
The Terrorism Research Center (TRC) is non-profit think tank focused on investigating and researching global terrorism issues through multi-disciplinary collaboration amongst a group of international experts.
Professor Bill Durodié is a Professor of Politics, Languages and International Studies at the University of Bath, UK, as well as a former head of department there.
Sociology of terrorism is a field of sociology that seeks to understand terrorism as a social phenomenon. The field defines terrorism, studies why it occurs and evaluates its impacts on society. The sociology of terrorism draws from the fields of political science, history, economics and psychology. The sociology of terrorism differs from critical terrorism studies, emphasizing the social conditions that enable terrorism. It also studies how individuals as well as states respond to such events.
The tactics of terrorism are diverse. As important as the actual attacks is the cultivation in the target population of the fear of such attacks, so that the threat of violence becomes as effective as actual violence. The different tactics that terrorist groups utilize can be very simple to extremely complex.
Terrorism is a major social issue in the Philippines linked to the Moro conflict and the communist rebellion. The country ranks in 18th place on the Global Terrorism Index's 2023 list of countries most affected by terrorism.
The counter-terrorism page primarily deals with special police or military organizations that carry out arrest or direct combat with terrorists. This page deals with the other aspects of counter-terrorism:
Homeland Security Centers of Excellence (HS-Centers) are sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. These Centers develop technology and training for police and domestic military units. The Centers were created under the Homeland Security Act in 2002 in order to establish a coordinated, university-based system to increase domestic security measures.
The Consortium for Strategic Communication is a think tank at Arizona State University.
Terrorism, fear, and media are interconnected. Terrorists uses the media to advertise their attacks and or messages, and the media uses terrorism events to further aid their ratings. Both promote unwarranted propaganda that instills mass amounts of public fear. Osama Bin Laden himself spoke of this weaponization of the media in a letter after 9/11. Within that letter, Bin Laden recalled fear as the deadliest weapon. He reflected upon the way western civilization has become obsessed with mass media in that they are quick to consume what will evidently bring them fear. He also states that, we are bringing this problem on our own people by giving the media such power. In relation to one’s need for media coverage, the Jihad can be classified as an offspring of mass media. The Jihad needs to conceptualize their martyrdom by leaving behind manifestos and live videos of their attacks. In fact, it is crucially important to them that it is being covered. For there is this overall fascination with crime itself, especially terrorism. The components the media looks for to deem the news “worthy” enough to publicize are categorized into ten qualities, terrorists usually exceed half in their attacks. The following are Immediacy, Conflict, Negativity, Human Interest, Photographability, Simple Story Lines, Topicality, Exclusivity, Reliability, and Local Interest. Morality and profitability often are two motivations when delivering news, however recently news has become more motivated in making money than shielding the public from bad news.
The Global Terrorism Index (GTI) is a report published annually by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), and was developed by IT entrepreneur and IEP's founder Steve Killelea. The index provides a comprehensive summary of the key global trends and patterns in terrorism since 2000. It is an attempt to systematically rank the nations of the world according to terrorist activity. The index combines a number of factors associated with terrorist attacks to build an explicit picture of the impact of terrorism, illustrating trends, and providing a data series for analysis by researchers and policymakers. It produces a composite score in order to provide an ordinal ranking of countries on the impact of terrorism.
The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) is a database of terrorist incidents from 1970 onward. As of May 2021, the list extended through 2019 recording over 200,000 incidents, although data from 1993 is excluded. The database is maintained by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, College Park in the United States. It is also the basis for other terrorism-related measures, such as the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) published by the Institute for Economics and Peace.
The Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST) describes itself as an "international security affairs research institute based at the University of Chicago." Formerly known as the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, and the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, it was founded in 2004 by Robert Pape, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and author of Dying to Win, a book about suicide terrorism. It compiles, maintains and publishes the Database on Suicide Attacks, a comprehensive dataset of suicide terrorism around the world that covers attacks from 1974 to 2019. CPOST frequently works closely with the United States government, particularly the Department of Defense.
This is a list of the number of incidents labelled as terrorism and not believed to have been carried out by a government or its forces. The following tables show the number of incidents, deaths, injuries based on data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) which is collected and collated by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland. The GTD defines a terrorist attack as "the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non‐state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation."
Marian Brooke Rogers is a British psychologist who is a Professor of Behavioural Science and Security at King's College London where she is Deputy Head of the Department of War Studies. She is a social psychologist who studies risk and threat. In 2014 she was asked to chair the Cabinet Office Behavioural Science Expert Group (BSEG). In 2019 she was appointed Chair of the Home Office Science Advisory Council (HOSAC). Professor Rogers was appointed to the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology in 2020.
