Compose a 2500 words assignment on securing the u.s. southern border: an assessment of the department of homeland security. Needs to be plagiarism free! The core reason for which the Department of Homeland security was formed is to protect the country from attacks by mitigating any external threats to any external and attacks. Consequent to this need to mitigate attacks and protect the internal borders of the country, 22 federal agencies were combined to form the Department of Homeland Security. Quite critical among these combined agencies are the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which has the mandate to secure the states’ borders. Therefore, the Department of Homeland security heavily relies upon the CBP to secure the borders using a collection of the most technologically advanced operations, devices, and computerized information systems (Bullock, et al., 2008). Important in ensuring border security and emergency responses are effective information and security systems, an area in which the Department of Homeland Security perhaps has the best system in the world (Bullock, et al., 2008). Otherwise, failure to establish high-tech and appropriate information security systems would expose the United States to high-risks of poor response to emergencies and border security breaches. In spite of the technological advances in the DHS’s systems, the information security system of the department has often been blamed for poor responses in emergency cases and failure to effectively protect the southern borders. For instance, if the department’s information security system is not comprehensive enough to protect the stored information and support the operations of the department, such vital information could be leaked to illegal organizations such as drug rings that infiltrate the U.S’s southern borders. Regarding the government’s responses to emergencies, there have been a lot of criticisms on how an emergency such as Hurricane Katrina was responded to by the Department of&nbsp.Homeland Security.&nbsp.