The State Homeland Security Program (SHSP) is a core assistance program that provides funds to build capabilities at the State, local, tribal, and territorial levels, to enhance our national resilience to absorb disruptions and rapidly recover from incidents both natural and manmade as well as to implement the goals and objectives included in State homeland security strategies and initiatives in their State Preparedness Report (SPR).
Activities implemented under SHSP must support terrorism preparedness by building or enhancing capabilities that relate to the prevention of, protection from, mitigation of, response to, and recovery from terrorism in order to be considered eligible. However, many capabilities which support terrorism preparedness simultaneously support preparedness for other hazards. Grantees must demonstrate this dual-use quality for any activities implemented under this program that are not explicitly focused on terrorism preparedness.
In developing applications for SHSP, recipients are encouraged to consider 2024 priority areas:
- Enhancing the protection of soft targets/crowded places
- Enhancing information and intelligence sharing and analysis
- Combating domestic violent extremism
- Enhancing cybersecurity
- Enhancing community preparedness and resilience
- Enhancing election security
FY24 HSGP State Priorities & Capabilities
The State Homeland Security Advisor and Deputy Homeland Security Advisor's priorities and guidance for the development of regional and statewide FY24 Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP) projects are:
- Proposed scopes of work should build or sustain identified projects.
- Proposed projects should reduce gaps for specific capabilities identified through the 2022 update to the State Threat Hazard Identification Risk Assessment (THIRA) and Stakeholder Preparedness Report (SPR) process or as identified through local/regional THIRAs.
- Proposed projects, when feasible, should align with the National Priorities introduced in the FY2023 HSGP guidance:
- Enhancing cybersecurity.
- Enhancing the protection of soft targets/crowded places.
- Enhancing information and intelligence sharing and cooperation with state and federal agencies, including DHS.
- Combating Domestic Violent Extremism.
- Enhancing election security.
- Enhancing community preparedness and resilience.
Cybersecurity (Preparedness, Protection Mission Area) Cybersecurity entails, but is not limited to, the following:
- Preventing cyber-attacks and data breaches.
- Detecting and analyzing malicious activity.
- Developing collaborative plans with partners to coordinate incident response activities.
- Participating in collaborative cybersecurity initiatives and efforts.
- Protecting physical and cyber assets, networks, applications, and systems that are vulnerable to exploitation.
- Securing public networks and infrastructure.
- Building, sustaining, and enhancing a state cybersecurity program and leverage cybersecurity capabilities of stakeholders across all sectors to maximize effectiveness.
In North Carolina, the Department of Public Safety is responsible for coordinating homeland security initiatives and various federal grants. Funds through SHSP are used to aid in the training of emergency first responders, the purchase of state-of-the-art equipment for combating and preventing terrorist acts and for planning, and exercise. Funds are also used for management, administration and the development of citizen corps projects at the local level.