New Directions

JONATHAN CALOF

Jul 15, 2015

My first 9 months as executive editor of Frontline Safety and Security has been a great learning process that included meeting with and learning from the people and organizations responsible for keeping Canadians Safe and Secure. The purpose of these meetings was to learn more about their issues, about what they wanted – and needed – to read about in the pages of FrontLine. In response to the question about your top issues, the top three answers have consistently been cybersecurity, critical infrastructure protection and mental health of frontline responders. On this latter, a head of one of our police forces stated “you can’t talk about police without also talking about their safety and mental health, this is a primary issue”.

In keeping with the needs of our readers, our spring edition focused on both cybersecurity and protecting frontline security officers, while this issue has articles about critical infrastructure protection.

In continuing my focus on learning from others, FrontLine will bring best practices and lessons from around the world to our readers. The more I hear from you, the reader, on what you need to read to help in your important role of keeping us safe and secure, the more I can focus on appropriate topics in this magazine. Let FrontLine be your partner in keeping the public Safe and Secure by offering innovative ideas from experts on topics of critical importance to you.

This voyage of learning and discovery has also taught me that Canadian knowledge and expertise is indeed very deep. We are fortunate to have recognized leadership in many areas of safety and security. I was impressed at how, during a conference I attended, senior leaders from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Center for Disease Control cited Health Canada and Canadian Food Inspection Agency personnel as examples of the best globally. These agencies are responsible for keeping our food system (and beyond that) safe for all Canadian’s and are on the front lines in many areas of practice and knowledge. Expect to see articles about these areas in the near future.

In the spring issue, we had an article by James Norrie, formerly of Ryerson University in Toronto and now the Dean of Business and Justice Studies at Utica College in NY – which has the only dually-accredited cyber security & cyber-crime programs in the United States.

In future issues you will read more on infrastructure protection from, among others, globally recognized infrastructure protection programs at Carleton University in Ottawa and Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Canada is also developing a variety of intelligence training programs that you will read more about in coming issues, including significant developments from the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management.

Another important area for safety and security for which Canada is developing extensive expertise, is in the area of Analytics, and readers will be seeing several articles on this emerging field.

Canadian expertise, infrastructure protection, cybersecurity, health and safety of frontline workers, analytics, and food safety, are some of the areas FrontLine will be focusing on as a result of what you, the readers, are looking for.

I encourage all of you to continue emailing me with article suggestions, topics, authors and feel free to propose articles that you want to write. You are not just our valued subscribers, but our partners as well.