Evolving Threats 

The fundamental aim of fostering a strong and sustainable economy is the bedrock for a stable and robust security environment. BENS provides the US government a very different and necessary perspective on emerging and evolving threats that would undermine our national security through economic damage to a globally competitive marketplace. Such threats as: cybersecurity, fragile states, energy sufficiency, financial market vulnerabilities, illicit trade, organized crime and corruption, border security.

Below is an overview of ongoing Evolving Threats Focus Activities. 

Stabilization and Economic Security- BENS Women in National Security (WINS)

This initiative brings together leading women in the private sector and government interested in national security. What began as a group designed to share experiences and to create a community of support, has grown into an initiative focusing on the critical issues of stabilization and economic development in high risk environments. Women are equal partners in preventing conflict and building peace in countries threatened by insecurity. The BENS WINS group is working with government and non-government stakeholders to explore how Government could better leverage the private sector expertise to achieve economic empowerment in conflict affected areas.

Threat Networks 

Threat networks today are loose groupings of criminals, terrorists, insurgents, their supporters and facilitators, who blend together to present an array of security risks.  While the motivations and structural characteristics of these networks differ, there are fundamental similarities: they are flexible, agile, and ever-evolving; they blend illicit activity with licit business and, in many cases, violence; they transcend borders; and they have confounded government efforts to counter them. These networks rely on a global web of transportation, logistics, social media and financial networks to sustain and expand their operations. BENS is working with two U.S. Government agencies to address this challenge: the Department of Defense Office for Counternarcotics and Global Threats and the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization. Since many of these networks operate as businesses, BENS is helping the government to understand these networks as businesses and bring to bear counter-network strategies that seek to exploit vulnerabilities in the business models on which the networks are built. 

Cyber Security Initiative 

The economic price of cyber espionage is huge. However, by treating cyber security as an “IT” issue instead of an enterprise risk management issue, companies are not fully protecting themselves against the cyber threat. BENS’ objective for its Cyber Security Initiative is to provide chief executive officers and board members with an entry point and roadmap to ascertain the cyber risk to their own companies, and devise a plan to mitigate and better manage cyber risk.

Information Sharing Across the Intelligence Community

BENS has a core group of members who have maintained interest in how intelligence is shared―or not―among consumers in the Executive Branch, as well as with their overseers in Congress. The failures to warn of the events leading to September 11, 2001, brought the issue into stark reality. Picking up where the 9/11 Commission left off, what has been the result of the changes it suggested, what has been implemented to great success, what has not worked, and what is missing?