Project Summary: Defining Homeland Security The term homeland security is a part of our national vocabulary. However, not everyone is comfortable with this term. Some consider it alien or even sinister, based on their memories of revelations about civil liberties abuses committed by the government under the guise of "national security" during the Cold War. There was much confusion and no consensus about the definition of homeland security until the Bush administration published the first National Homeland Security Strategy in 2002 and an updated version in 2007. It is essential to understand not only the distinctions, but also the relationships between homeland security and other key terms or concepts such as homeland defense, national security, and emergency management.