Prevention is the first critical mission area in Homeland Security.  Prevention means to stop something while it’s going on before it has a chance to go any further. For example, our focus is to prevent terrorists from carrying out an attack.  This is accomplished through a variety of different first responders (firefighters, police, healthcare professionals, transportation, etc…) working together to gather information, analyze and get to them before they harm anyone.

This is the first critical mission area because if we are able to stop a terrorist from doing any harm, we have succeeded.  Unfortunately, while this is the most important critical mission area, it is also the most difficult to accomplish.  This is why we rely on other mission areas to protect our citizens.