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In a period of seven days, Nerette was faced with the security fallout from an active shooter situation at a next-door hospital that left a cardiac surgeon and the gunman dead, and then a blizzard bearing down on Boston that would require much advanced planning for his facility. "His job is incredibly diffcult and chal- lenging," commented Rob Hile, modera- tor of the session and director of strategic accounts for SureView Systems. Day-to-day security at the Harvard teach- ing hospital and nationally known cancer treatment facility is the tip of the iceberg, Hile said. The successful response to unplanned events, that part of the iceberg that lies underneath, is what puts security professionals to the test, he added. Communication was at the heart of both situations, said Nerette, a "20 under 40" winner last year who oversees a security staff of 50. Dana-Farber is adjacent to Brigham and Women's Hospital in the city's Longwood Medical and Academic Area. At 11:02 a.m. Jan. 20, a call came into the Boston Police Department about a shooting there. Brigham and Women's activated its emergency noti- fcation system. "Because we are a tight-knit group" of four hospitals in that area, "we all heard it. We quickly got our command center spooled up," said Nerette, who was working remotely that day. "Within two minutes the police were there, and we got notifcation that the suspect was down." Still, "at what point is this active shooter frayed." Hospitals deal with high-charged emotional situations on the part of patients and family members every day, and there's no telling when one could turn violent. "It touched a lot of people, what do we have in place to prevent something like that from happening here? I was looking at guards in the lobby and said, 'Is this who is going to stop that from happening here?'" That's an issue he constantly considers, he said, and communicates to employees about. A few days after the shooting came the forecast for a blizzard that would dump a few feet of snow on Boston in a very short period. "We needed to plan to meet our obliga- tions to the care of our patients," he said. "Babies are still going to be born and appen- dices still need to be removed," even when snow comes down at 3 inches per hour, which at one point it did, and wreaks havoc with transportation and more, he said. For the blizzard, Nerette put the hospi- tal's emergency plan in place for extra food and linens not only for patients but also for employees who would be socked in. Brigham and Women's was at near capacity and asked Nerette to provide 100 beds for its staff. He complied. Dana-Farber has an MOU with the other hospitals in the area, along with informal collaboration with their security staffs. They organize drills together. "Our plans need to be integrated because we are so geographi- cally close. An emergency for one is an emergency for all of us," he said. The four hospitals in the neighborhood each have their own command centers but have been talking about a federated identi- fcation management system. Many doctors and other staff come and go between the separate facilities. "It's an incredibly diffcult challenge when it comes to ID management, Nerette said. The hospital also has an excellent work- ing relationship with the BPD, he said. Among his non-active shooter and non- blizzard challenges is dealing with legacy systems. "I have a workforce that has to use those systems" and training them is para- mount, he said. "I'm a big proponent of technology and leveraging technology," Nerette said, adding that he has been working with a number of manufacturers on beta testing systems. It's clear, moderator Hile said, that Ner- ette is a "bridge builder" with peers at other facilities, with police and with security technology manufacturers and providers. The recent incidents affecting Dana-Far- ber tested Nerette's team, but the training and expertise involved by all paid off, Hile said. SSN situation our situation? It was next door," Nerette said. He and his team had to decide whether to lock down and, again, how to provide accurate information to employees and the public. Their decisions were successful. "We were back to normal within 30 minutes," he said. That didn't end the emergency, however. Traffc in the neighborhood came to a stand- still because of the police presence. There was mainstream media pressing for informa- tion and helicopters fying overhead. Then, there was the dynamic of social media to deal with. Information about the shooting was online within a few minutes, some of it inaccurate, Nerette said. "The challenge for us was to how to quickly communicate to our workforce and the general public while competing with social media," he said. "There was a perva- sive need for communications throughout the whole incident." Dana-Farber's communications team manages social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook; those platforms are not managed through Nerette's emergency management team. "We feel we have a dif- ferent audience with our emergency man- agement. Social media is an external thing," he said, but it's something he's taking a look at now. The Brigham-Women's shooting turned out to have minimal impact on Dana Far- ber's physical security, but it did have an impact on employees there, he said, another issue he had to deal with. During the investigation of the shoot- ing, Dana-Farber employees' "nerves were Ralph Nerette, security director for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, taught the audience of TechSec 2015 about how to 'roll with the punches' after dealing with a shooter and a blizzard. Dana-Farber security director deals with back-to-back crises TechSec Day 2 keynote: In emergency management, be ready to 'roll with the punches' "We needed to meet our obligations to the care of our patients. ... Babies are still going to be born and appendices still need to be removed." —ralph Nerette, Dana-Farber cancer Institute Continued from page 1 SEcUrITY SYSTEMS NEWS March 2015 www.securitysystemsnews.com NEWS 13