by Ariel Benjamin Mannes | Mar 11, 2019 | Public Integrity, Security

I was recently published in Security Magazine, discussing the assessment of established safety plans. See below for an article excerpt, and click HERE for the full article.

“As someone who has been engaged by consulting clients and full-time employers to conduct threat assessments and write security and emergency preparedness plans, I am often left puzzled by how many organizations go to great lengths to assess their vulnerabilities and create plans to address them, but almost never test their ongoing effectiveness. In the safety space, workplaces almost never think twice about regular fire drills and shelter-in-place exercises. However, many employers, often out of a desire to “not alarm” their occupants, rarely test their security or disaster plans – presenting a circumstance where their plans may be set up for failure.

After the 9/11 attacks, the US government started to look at the issue of practicing the intricate relationships between federal, state and local police, fire and medical response agencies to simulated large-scale disasters, culminating with the hulking multi-state TOPOFF exercises of the mid-2000s. However, in the second decade of the millennium, these exercises started to wane and the private sector saw even fewer real-time disaster or security breach drills, despite the lessons learned by the modern surge of active shooter incidents like those seen in Parkland, Las Vegas and Orlando.”