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In 2014-15, the Ebola virus was a source of devastation for millions in West Africa. The disease-which quickly causes severe hemorrhaging, organ failure, and death-was primarily found in isolated parts of central Africa until the outbreak. The three nations at the center of the epidemic were Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, all of which share borders. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization confirmed more than 11,000 deaths from 28,000 cases of Ebola through the end of August 2015. The Ebola epidemic was a major test for crisis responders in the public health field. First responders and crisis response agencies can learn from the way organizations across the globe worked together to ultimately contain the virus. Examining both global and local efforts reveals some key lessons about readiness in any situation. Some of these lessons may be important immediately, as the Zika virus spreads and becomes a global threat.

Our nation's first professional learning network for first responders aspires to make access to public safety training as easy as downloading music from iTunes

This month, Envisage Technologies will host a live webinar entitled, "Months to Minutes," at 2 pm ET/ 11 am PT on Tuesday, July 28. This session will give participants the opportunity to learn how Utah's Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) streamlined their training and compliance process from 12 months to 5 minutes. Scott Stephenson, Director of Utah POST, will describe how he transformed the compliance process using software specifically designed for law enforcement.

In addition to learning to deal with emergencies, police officers undergo training to improve daily interactions with diverse people from their communities. To accomplish this, many departments are adopting new strategies for communicating with marginalized individuals, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

In the year following the Newtown tragedy, police have reassessed the way they'd respond to a similar incident, and a number of departments are learning how to better work with people who have mental health issues or are in crisis.

Military training is a demanding experience. Service members test themselves mentally and physically by enduring extreme situations. The skills learned in these exercises put soldiers in a position to succeed on the battlefield, but they also remain valuable when a veteran transitions from the service into civilian life.

Envisage Technologies, the leading software company for the public safety training and compliance industry, announced that it received a major investment led by Armory Capital, a family investment office. Financial terms were not disclosed. Envisage will use the new capital to solidify the company's position as the dominant training and compliance software platform in the law enforcement and public safety sector. Envisage Technologies is the developer of the Acadis Readiness Suite®; the only training ecosystem platform focused on the needs of public safety. The new funding also will enable Envisage to accelerate its rollout of FirstForward, the Nation's first secure professional learning network for first responders.

Each year, public safety professionals learn more about the complexities of firefighting. Technology has advanced with that knowledge, allowing first responders to capture critical data and use it to inform future calls. Faced with budgetary and personnel shortages that hamper management of that data, however, fire departments stand to benefit from adoption of cloud-based solutions. Taking on the burden of hardware and software maintenance, Software as a Service (SaaS) greatly mitigates the technical overhead for a firehouse. Cloud computing improves performance, increases access to important information, and lowers the total cost of ownership for software. For fire departments, that efficiency translates into more effective emergency response.

Faced with new threats, first responders put their training to the test in 2014. Law enforcement agencies, disaster workers and even school teachers learned new practices and honed their instincts to better allow them to survive stressful situations while caring for others. As the year comes to an end, we look back on how comprehensive training strategies contributed to effective emergency responses

The primary goal of any first responder is to come home alive. Ongoing training is essential to improve the chances of that happening. To be effective, however, training must evolve to reflect and anticipate future emergency scenarios. Threats of the past become instruction tomorrow.

Authorities evacuated hundreds of students in an orderly procession - a demonstration of aggressive security measures developed by police and schools following the chaotic 1999 shooting at Columbine, some 8 miles west of Arapahoe High. After that tragedy, police across the country developed "active shooter" training in which responding officers rush toward gunfire - and step over bodies and bleeding victims if necessary - to stop the gunman.

The interests of public safety demand that law enforcement training programs should be continuously updated. Over the past few decades, federal and state authorities responded to this demand by passing legislation geared toward improving basic law enforcement training programs. This legislation intended to present officers with realistic challenges they may face and solutions they must employ in the line of duty. Within this real-life frame, individual departments can tailor their own local training strategies to provide the most effective tactics for their specific jurisdictions.