12:30 PM - 1:00 PM Eastern
The Maryland Emergency Management Association is proud to present "The Impact of Disinformation Campaigns on Disaster Response and Recovery" by Bear Afkhami.
In a 2023 address to emergency managers, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell remarked that what kept her up at night was the looming dangers of hard cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns by nation-state actors on the U.S. homeland. Such hard and soft cyber attacks have been increasingly prepositioned and coordinated with human-caused, technological and natural disasters. This challenge is made more complex with the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events, giving adversaries plenty of opportunities to interfere with natural disaster response and recovery efforts.
While we are at great risk of both hard cyber attacks, including data thefts, denials and sabotage, this presentation will take the opportunity to solely focus on soft cyber attacks, including disinformation campaigns aiming to slow down, interrupt or weaken the public’s confidence in emergency management response and recovery. Specific examples of disinformation campaigns during and post disasters will be provided with discussions on the sources of those campaigns and the impacts they had on emergency management response and recovery. Finally, the audience will be provided with some best practices on preparing and responding to disinformation campaigns.
Bear Afkhami is an Emergency Manager with MPACT Strategic Consulting with 15 years of experience in prevention, preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery. He has an MS in Analytics, BA in Intelligence, and is a graduate of the FEMA National Emergency Management Academy. Bear has numerous credentials including FEMA Professional Continuity Practitioner, FEMA Infrastructure Protection, FEMA Infrastructure Disaster Management, EMT, and ACCO Climate Change Professional.
Bear is also a professor of Uncrewed and Autonomous Studies at Capitol Technology University, an NSA and DHS center of excellence as well as President of InfraGard Maryland, an FBI and private sector partnership that focuses on security threats to critical infrastructure. He has written articles for public safety publications and regularly presents at EM conferences on drones, artificial intelligence, mitigation, climate change, water and the BRIC program at major conferences such as the National Hurricane Conference, National Resilience Summit, the CyberMaryland Conference, the Texas Emergency Management Conference, MAFSM as well as the Virginia and Maryland Emergency Management Symposiums.
Thursday, October 2 · 12:30 – 1:30pm
Time zone: America/New_York
Google Meet joining info
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/ypk-jvdi-fkh
Or dial: (US) +1 832-856-0095 PIN: 864 002 100#
More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/ypk-jvdi-fkh?pin=6443419397733
| 10/2/2025 |    |
