Executive Protection Best Practices: Part 1
For companies and individuals, ensuring the safety and security of the organization and its employees is of utmost importance. Integral to providing that security is effective corporate risk management, and for individuals, particularly executives, an experienced executive protection team. Mitigating potential threats can help companies avoid serious and damaging results.
Executive protection can include travel risk management, workplace violence mitigation, special event management and close protection agents, and there are a number of best practices when it comes to providing the necessary protection.
Awareness of one’s surroundings is the first step in ensuring that he or she is properly protected. Knowing the threats associated with that area and the threats that the individual is faced with will help the executive protection team in providing effective security. The team assigned to an individual or a group of individuals must also be highly-trained and able to react to many different types of events without a moment’s hesitation.
Whether an individual is traveling to a foreign country or a different city or state, it’s imperative that the team responsible for providing security conducts a thorough advance, at least virtually, but preferable in person as well. One effective way to better understand the area is to work with local, highly experienced and reliable security personnel in the area to which an individual may be going. While the assigned team can do research to understand where they are headed, individuals who have experience in that country or city will be able to provide additional insight to the area and risks that may be associated with it.
Within the geographic area, knowing the details, such as routes that will need to be driven, both primary and backups identified, locations visited, and a detailed understanding about physical location’s characteristics that individuals or teams will be in is vital to their security. Knowing where potential vulnerabilities to the principal are located and understanding the physical environment, such as floor plans, emergency exits and life safety capacities, are all part of understanding the area of operation. This knowledge and awareness of locations and types of potential threats can help the team if an event does arise, allowing them to get the principal to safety. Further to this point, it is important to utilize a security driver and not just a chauffeur. Vehicle movements are some of the most vulnerable times, and security drivers should be utilized for most executive protection situations.
Next week, we’ll bring you insight on the type of personnel that must take part in an executive protection detail and the threat assessment needed to carry out an effective protection task.