All organisations want to keep their employees safe, this goes across the supply chain and up to top executives. Whether they’re protecting them from the likes of terrorism, upset customers, natural disasters or road accidents, these risks are heightened when employees and especially executives travel.
Whilst threats to travel security are not limited to highly unlikely events, many serious threats like the sudden eruption of a volcano, or terrorist are, thankfully, things that most travellers never have to worry about. However, if COVID-19 has shown us anything it’s that no matter how unlikely a situation may be, they are still a possibility and could escalate incredibly quickly.
Businesses have over the last years begun realising the importance of reducing travel risks especially for executives where the potential of risk is increased and the potential cost heightened. In a 2017 study by Business Travel News of 229 travel buyers and managers and corporate safety and security managers, it was found that “65% said their companies' attention to traveller safety and travel risk management has increased over the past three years.” Ignoring the risks that travel holds could be an expensive mistake.
4 Essentials to Consider for a Effective Travel Security
Reliable Intelligence
Education
Briefings
Planned Response
Reliable Risk Intelligence
Without an accurate risk assessment and a detailed understanding of the potential local risks, a security team cannot make a properly balanced decision regarding operation security. It is incredibly important then, not just for teams to perform risk assessments before travel but to continually monitor local situations so that should things change the security team can react accordingly and take appropriate actions.
For example, as COVID-19 was evolving into a global pandemic security teams needed reliable information from trustworthy sources to allow them to properly understand the potential risks it posed as well as to navigate through the plethora of misinformation being spread. Teams using Signal OSINT were able to get this information and take preventative actions, putting secondary measures into place should the situation evolve. In this particular example, extreme action was needed. The security teams first suspended all executive travel to badly affected areas and as the situation evolved into a more serious global crisis they evacuated executives and employees who were overseas, before entirely suspending further business travel.
Without the proper information, the best course of action cannot be pursued. Situations change rapidly and timely intelligence will provide detail on current and future anticipated threats.
Staff Education
As part of an effective travel security program staff need to be aware of the potential dangers and have the tools and knowledge to minimise and mitigate personal travel risks. Risk can be dramatically reduced with good basic personal security methodology which is often the most cost-effective and efficient way to improve the safety of employees abroad.
Part of this education must be an ongoing effort to share with the relevant parties this real-time information from data sources gathered through tools such as Signal.
Debrief
With properly trained staff, the individuals travelling should be aware of the environment, threats and risks that they are entering. On top of this, as we mentioned above this information sharing should not stop at the briefing, but as the threats evolve the relevant individual needs to be kept up to date so that they can change their behaviour if necessary.
A Planned Response
The fourth aspect of an effective travel risk management plan is having planning a response to all possible crises. In certain locations, some aspects and threats are more prevalent.
For example, emergency services might be lacking or public transport might be more dangerous. In these cases, proper plans need to be put in place. For the latter, you might arrange a rental car for your executive, or a driver, if the road laws are known to be difficult. These preventative actions remove several potential threats which would be far more costly for the business than the cost of something like a driver.
There must be a pre-identified and rehearsed service in place to ensure an effective and timely response to an emergency.
Three main parts to an effective response include:
1. Prevention – The best security avoids or prevents threats from becoming risks. A good benchmark is to be able to identify the exact location of your employees and be able to effectively communicate with them within 15-20 minutes of an incident occurring.
2. Crisis Management – If a crisis does happen, the first thing you need is an effective communications channel. Through this, you need to be able to quickly implement plans and processes to manage the evolving crises.
3. Evacuation or Hibernation Plans – If a situation escalates beyond a certain point it may be that security teams need to implement and evacuation or hibernation plan. Which will either have the executive returned home, or hibernate in-situ until the situation changes. An example of a necessary evacuation plan being implemented would be in response to the Corona Virus. With only a little warning it became apparent to those organisations who had teams or individuals in Wuhan China that they needed to get them out of their fast. This situation then escalated rapidly to become a global crises.
Challenges
Travel security and executive protection comes with a number of challenges. It doesn’t look good to put a large amount of money into executive protection, however, there needs to be a balance to avoid potential risks. If an executive is attacked, or involved in an accident whilst abroad then shareholder value may drop, potentially for days, and sometimes the pressure in these scenarios can have negative effects long after the incident.
A situation can change rapidly, requiring a different response even as soon as hours later., which is why having real time intel of an event is so crucial. With the right systems in place and the right tools in the security teams toolbox, threats can be identified, monitored, and effective preventative measures and contingency plans put in place. All of this acts to protect both the individuals and the company involved.
The Role of OSINT in Managing Executive Safety During Travel
The modern workforce is more decentralized than ever. As employees travel or work remotely, it is important to know about potential issues that could impact their safety and security. Signal can assist with early warnings of:
natural disasters in or near destinations;
potential travel disruptions;
terror attacks;
security threats;
political or economic indicators.
Signal Open Source Intelligence software allows you to gather real-time data. More importantly Signal allows users to tailor their feeds to get customised data relevant to their particular situation. Which means instead of having to monitor every part of the web manually you can instead get customised filtered alerts.
On top of this, Signal risk intelligence software enables users to monitor the surface, deep, and dark web. Many dark web forums don’t allow strangers to access their sites and require authenticated logins which makes it even harder to gain access on to these sites and monitor potential risks that occur in these places which security teams need to be aware of such as data breaches, threats of physical attacks and terrorism.
Learn more about how Signal can improve your executive protection…