08/02/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 08/02/2024 07:43
As hurricane season in the southern United States hits its stride and damage from the first storm of the season is cleared, government agencies at all levels are continuing their preparations for the months ahead. Meanwhile, deadly tornado outbreaks continue to sweep across the middle of the United States, leaving many communities without basic government services.
As disaster recovery efforts continue for these and other weather events, one thing is clear; the damage to infrastructure is immediate and often long-term. This includes taking down critical communications networks needed to coordinate search and rescue, recovery, and emergency services. In response, the Cisco Crisis Response team has outfitted two new assets to help-the Cisco® Network Emergency Response Vehicles (NERVs).
Cisco NERVs are operated by Cisco Crisis Response, a small team of technical engineers, operations experts, and logistics coordinators who work in tandem with an extended group of more than 500 Cisco volunteers, known as the CCR Community. The NERVs are part of a suite of solutions that include trailers and portable kits, with similar yet less extensive capabilities than the NERVs. When disaster strikes, including cyberattacks, Cisco NERVs can provide impacted communities with disaster recovery capabilities to:
"When communications infrastructure has been compromised, the truck is designed to roll on to the scene and re-establish communications for emergency responders," stated Joseph Harrison, global communications manager for Cisco Crisis Response. "That would include public and private agencies, like local and state emergency response and on up to federal agencies, like FEMA. But also, nonprofits and other organizations that work together to provide support to affected communities."
A NERV is located on each coast of the United States. One in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina and the other in San Jose, California. They replace two older vehicles that served a similar disaster recovery role for fifteen years. But the new vehicles offer more advanced Cisco and Cisco Meraki solutions that can be sent to the scene of a disaster immediately to setup fast, low-latency secure connections for first responders and others. This suite of communications options includes:
According to Matt Runyan, CCR's mission readiness and deployments lead, "On the networking side we decided on fully redundant components. The new trucks are Meraki network based. So, we have wireless access points, as well as a hyperflex compute-cluster. And we have dual switches, dual security, and dual servers, while still using less energy than the older trucks."
Cisco Crisis Response leverages our people, technology, and financial resources to support nonprofit and emergency response partners that are working tirelessly on disaster preparedness and response. Cisco NERVs are available for disaster recovery assistance throughout the continental United States, during the acute phase of an emergency. To engage the Cisco NERV, or any of the other services provided by Cisco Crisis Response, please contact your Cisco account team.
Also, check out our additional resources for state and local governments: