Counter Terror Awards: Communications

The Counter Terror Awards acknowledge excellence in the global fight against terrorism. For the last two years, organisations and individuals from the UK and overseas have been recognised across 20 categories for their contributions to reducing the threat of global terrorism.

On 8 June, the winning organisations and individuals will be announced across a number of categories. Here, we look at the Communications Award.

The Communications Award recognises communication systems and their potential to assist organisations in both threat detection and post-terrorism communication between governmental and emergency service organisations. In previous years, this award has recognised the use of Body Worn Video technology and real-time footage from UAVs, and this year will be won by one of three organisations.

In December, a counter terrorism training course was made available to the public for the first time. Devised by counter terrorism officers and security experts, the ACT Awareness eLearning package was previously only available to staff working in crowded places like shopping centres and entertainment venues. However, Counter Terrorism Policing has decided to open up the training to anyone who wants to become a CT Citizen so they can learn how to spot the signs of suspicious behaviour and understand what to do in the event of a major incident.

Also using an interactive online platform to provide secure expert counter terrorism advice, a collaboration between Pool Re and the Joint Security and Resilience Centre has been shortlisted for its efforts to provide businesses holistic access to timely and accurate information in the event of an attack. Completing the three-strong shortlist is the Metropolitan Police, for their work with Facebook to improve the social network’s ability to detect live streaming of terrorism and potentially better alert officers about an attack. This was launched following the Christchurch terrorist attack, in which a live stream video showing the New Zealand mosque shootings was watched about 4,000 times in total before being removed.

Make sure to keep checking the Counter Terror Business website, for more information on the categories and shortlists.