November 2025 — Cargo Theft for the Holidays and Other Security Headlines

There’s a lot going on in the world of physical risk and vulnerability; it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the latest news and developments. We’ll keep you informed with the best content to keep your organization safe and secure. Check out the top news and headlines from the past month.

Ambush-style shooting against U.S. National Guard in Washington, D.C. near the White House

From Reuters: On November 26, 2025, two National Guard members on duty in downtown Washington were ambushed near the Farragut West Metro station, just blocks from the White House. The attacker opened fire on them, critically wounding both. The suspect was taken into custody after being wounded during the exchange. In the days following, one of the Guards members died of her injuries; the other remains hospitalized.

Our take: A uniformed, armed force on patrol near one of the highest-security zones in the country was still vulnerable to a lone individual with lethal intent. This underscores that physical security, even in heavily protected zones, can be compromised by asymmetric threats, personal grievances, or terrorism. We believe will continue to see a rise is these types of attacks.

U.S. supply-chain under siege: surge in cargo theft ahead of holiday season

From CargoNet: As of mid-November 2025, CargoNet has recorded more than US$ 318 million in stolen cargo nationwide. The average value per stolen shipment has risen to US$ 278,797 — a dramatic increase compared to prior years. The firm has issued a public alert warning carriers, brokers and shippers to expect heightened cargo-theft activity during the upcoming Thanksgiving and holiday shipping surge.

Our take: For many companies, the supply chain is the soft underbelly of operations. When you’re rushing to move goods, staffing is tight, and demand drives aggressive scheduling: that’s when adversaries strike. Physical-security risk is not a warehouse gate problem alone; it starts upstream, with broker-systems, manifest processes and routing plans.

Cyber-enabled freight fraud: digital compromise turning into physical losses

From TRACE Cyber Intelligence Pulse: Over the past few months, researchers have documented a wave of campaigns targeting North American freight and trucking companies. In many cases, attackers use phishing or remote management tools to compromise freight-broker systems, hijack load-board credentials, and reroute or steal shipments — sometimes without ever physically breaking into a warehouse or truck lot.

Our take: The border between cyber risk and physical risk is gone. Logistics, freight-forwarding, cash-transport, warehousing; all are now part of the same threat surface. If you treat “IT security” and “physical security” as separate silos, you’re ignoring reality. Adversaries increasingly exploit digital tooling to make physical theft easier, more scalable, and harder to trace.

November’s Top Security Grants

Fiscal Year 2024 Flood Mitigation Assistance Swift Current: Fiscal Year 2024 Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA) Swift Current aims to better align the delivery of FMA flood mitigation funding to the disaster survivor experience. The purpose of FMA Swift Current is to reduce or eliminate the flood risk to NFIP-participating communities and repetitive flood damage to structures and buildings insured by the NFIP following a flood-related disaster event, and to enhance community flood resilience within NFIP-participating communities. It does so by providing funding for mitigation opportunities immediately after a flood disaster event with the aim of delivering mitigation outcomes. Grant closes: Jan 15, 2026

Systems-Based Approaches to Improve Patient Safety by Improving Healthcare Worker Safety and Well-Being: The purpose of this grant is to advance system-level approaches to improve patient safety by improving healthcare worker safety and well-being. Patient safety cannot be fully achieved without healthcare worker safety and well-being. This NOFO will contribute to AHRQs goal of reinvigorating the patient safety movement by adding fresh perspectives and insights of healthcare professionals to efforts to improve patient safety. Grant closes: 2029

About the Author

Daniel Young

Founder & Chief Innovation Officer

Daniel has been a security and risk advisor for more than 10 years, and is passionate about helping companies to better understand their risks to undesirable events on a daily basis. Dan previously served as the Regional Bioterrorism Coordinator for District 1 in Michigan, where he was instrumental in preparing communities for catastrophic incidents. He has also acted as the Private Security Liaison for the City of Lansing’s Critical Infrastructure Team, which identified and documented deficiencies in the city’s critical infrastructure.

He is a Co-Founder of the CSO Risk Council, a think tank of seasoned security professionals and thought leaders with extensive experience in managing the physical security and risks of large enterprises consisting of multiple sites and whose mission is to create a better process to develop and share innovative solutions and pertinent information with organizations to improve safety and security risk by providing a forum to discuss best practices and recommendations for specific risk scenarios and to network with other enterprise security professionals.