Top Tips to Keep You Safe at Your Next Event. You Bought the Ticket—Now What?

Recently tragedies in a variety of venues like the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, Pulse Night Club in Orlando, and the Manchester Arena/Ariana Grande concert in England have shown us that awareness requires a 24/7 commitment to help us stay safe—because planning for a potential disaster is now as necessary as buying a ticket. Whether you are going to an event at a downtown park, outdoor summer concert, stadium venue, indoor arena, or smaller club, you must now add “what if” to your to-do list. We’re sharing information and strategies to increase awareness if you’re planning to attend or drop others off at an event.

Plan Before the Event

If you plan to attend a major event such as a rock concert or professional sports at a large-scale venue, you need to be prepared for many types of incidents, whether intentional, accidental, or natural. One of the most important things you can do is to familiarize yourself with the building and property and have a solid plan of action in the unlikelihood that an incident occurs. Because power outages, medical events, and acts of terrorism can happen, you need to be prepared if you’re present when they do.

Your commitment to safety begins before you set foot on the property or in the venue. From checking online for a seating diagram to familiarize yourself with entrances and exit locations, handicapped access, medical help, bathrooms, security, access to public transportation, and parking areas to monitoring social media for any negative or derogatory stories about the event, artist, or team, you can educate yourself about your surroundings—which will help you in the event of an emergency.

What to Do if an Incident Occurs

This place is probably new to you so look around and be committed to “See Something, Say Something” if you observe something happening that doesn’t seem quite right. And while you’re looking around, take note of exits and stairwells in case elevators or escalators aren’t working. A fully charged cell phone with a flashlight will help you if the power goes out and you can use a scarf or bandana to cover your nose and mouth in case the venue becomes filled with smoke or the air is otherwise compromised as well as a sling, bandage, or head cover.

If an incident occurs while you are at the event, you must remain calm so that you can listen for and follow any instructions that might be communicated over the PA system or by security personnel. Your pre-planning will help you navigate your surroundings now in order to direct your group to a safe area and away from the incident or a large crowd to avoid a possible stampede.

After you are safe, assess yourself and your party for any injuries because adrenaline driven activity can mask injuries. You should not attempt to re-enter the venue unless law enforcement directs you to move inside. Also, you should share with the authorities any pertinent information, video, or photos that might help in the subsequent investigation.

There Is No Substitute for Experience 

Our proprietary methodology for planning, constructing, and implementing event security has been designed, developed, and continues to evolve from my personal experiences in security leadership roles for the federal government with the United States Secret Service Major Events Division, where I helped secure the Super Bowl, Olympics, National Conventions, and the Presidential Inauguration. Additionally, my team’s project management background in professional sports with the National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, and the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security (NCS4) provides large-scale event security expertise.

Michael Verden, Owner and CEO of The Lake Forest Group (www.lakeforestgroup.com), is a former police officer, Director of Security for the NBA, and retired Secret Service agent with 21 years of experience protecting the President and First Lady as well as large scale events like the NATO Summit and the United Nations General Assembly. As a strategic security consulting firm, The Lake Forest Group offers you expertise in event security, stadium security, residential security, risk management, emergency preparedness, expert witness litigation, active shooter plans, executive protection, training, and medical marijuana security.

We can design an event security plan that’s right for your culture and, most importantly, protects your most valuable assets—people. Contact me, Mike Verden, Owner and CEO of The Lake Forest Group, at [email protected] or 312.515.8747 to find out more—or share this article with anyone who needs to create a event security plan to safeguard their employees, customers, and brand.


Stadium Security Plan: Are We Safe?   

Those tasked with stadium security face challenges from a number of threats—an airborne concern from a hijacked aircraft or a drone packed with explosives or hazardous material; a ground attack carried out by a vehicle transporting a bomb or driven into a crowd of people, similar to what occurred in Charlottesville; and suicide bombers such as the stadium attack in Paris during an international soccer match with France’s president in attendance. The possibility of any of these challenges creates a complex and ubiquitous danger for stadiums and the need for a holistic stadium security plan.

Doing More with Less

What really brings success to a stadium security plan is how well the stadium operators adapt industry best practices in stadium security to your particular situation—ensuring that the security services will perform before, during, and after an incident to avoid a devastating impact on your operations. Our recommended approach to optimizing stadium security starts with a security plan that leverages the most efficient and cost-effective measures for event security, emergency management, continuity of operations, and security operations. Working together, we’ll create, enhance, and update a stadium security plan that achieves the highest level of execution and results in peak performance operations no matter what challenges your venue faces.

There’s No Substitute for Experience       

Our proprietary methodology for planning, constructing, and implementing stadium security has been designed, developed, and continues to evolve from my personal experiences in security leadership roles for the federal government with the United States Secret Service Major Events Division, where I helped secure the Olympics, National Conventions, and the Presidential Inauguration. Additionally, our team’s project management background in professional sports with the National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, and the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security (NCS4) provides large-scale event security expertise.

Haves and Have Nots

A stadium security plan begins with an on-site assessment of the venue to evaluate the resources you have and those you don’t have, including: (1) personnel security (security officers, police officers, fire fighters, guest services, paramedics, and emergency managers); (2) security technologies (intrusion detection, card readers, video surveillance, duress devices, notification systems, and communications capabilities); (3) physical security (barriers, barricades, bollards, lighting, gates, and fences); (4) emergency preparedness (emergency evacuation, lockdown, shelter-in-place, triage, and decontamination); and (5) liaison with law enforcement, fire department, and emergency medical.

When the Rubber Meets the Road

Understanding your own resources as well as those of external support services, such as the first responder community, enables stadium leadership to construct an effective stadium security plan. The plan needs to account for access control, security, safety, and enforcement of the policies and procedures that discourage unlawful activity both in the stadium and on the exterior grounds. As one of the main requirements, your security plan must clearly demonstrate succinct and measurable processes to safeguard all assets, including the people, property, and brand. It is equally important to incorporate crisis management into the stadium security plan so that specific guidelines address all hazards, such as weather, accident, or crime. In addition, when you coordinate with the public sector in contingency operations, emergency management, and incident response, among other areas, you ensure that the event participants, as well as the attendees, are not exposed to risk.

Nothing Fits Better Than a Tailor Made Plan

Because I have designed and managed security for major events in both the public and private sectors, I benchmark stadium security against comparable venues as well as industry standards and apply my knowledge of best practice-based stadium security disciplines to each client’s environment. For a complete picture of your stadium security profile, you can schedule a professional assessment that will evaluate the technical, physical, personnel, and procedural security measures currently in place at your venue.

You’ll find out what you’re doing well and where you’re exposed to unnecessary risk as well as receive recommendations and strategic considerations with next steps to protect critical components of your processes—especially where vulnerabilities currently exist. Also, you’ll identify what, if any, security and safety measures or systems are needed now or should be introduced at a later date.


Marijuana Security Strategies from Cradle to the Grave  

A marijuana security plan covers more than the time period from sowing the seed to selling the product. The plan itself plays a major role in a strategic security strategy designed to protect people, property, assets, brands, and, of course, marijuana. While architects of a marijuana security plan need to focus on the steps taken long before the cultivation phase and well after the transaction occurs, I can make the case that more time, resources, manpower, and strategy invested in pre-cultivation results in a more comprehensive, efficient, and effective marijuana security plan.

Seed to Sale

In the marijuana industry, the phrase “seed to sale” suggests that everything is covered, but that’s not necessarily true. You certainly need to address everything from growing to selling—the pathway, in supply chain terms. But supply chain pathway operations focus on much more, like production and logistics and the security technologies such as tracking and monitoring needed to coordinate these activities more effectively and concurrently. For the specific processes of seed to sale, the pathway follows the movement of marijuana internally at a grower/processer and externally as product travels to the dispensary and cash to the bank.

Cradle to the Grave

A holistic marijuana security plan covers from “cradle to the grave, ” which expands the range of security responsibilities to include product development (cradle), sourcing, transportation to the grower/processor, and movement after the sale, such as patient and customer safety. Additionally, security measures need to protect people outside your building who could be the victim of a crime because they are in possession of a Schedule 1 drug with a substantial street value. Also, you must ensure disposal (grave) of marijuana in a manner consistent with federal, state, and local laws so that waste is destroyed properly and rendered unusable.

A Chain Is Only as Strong as Its Weakest Link

A marijuana security plan creates clear, succinct, and measurable processes to safeguard product, people, and property—while incorporating supply chain pathway risk management strategies with specific guidelines that address all hazards, such as adulteration, contamination, corruption, theft, and diversion. The plan also should develop additional strategies for on-site protection from power outages, fire, chemical spills, trespassers, or criminal actions including physical security measures, security technologies, policies and procedures, personnel practices, emergency management, incident reporting, and risk mitigation guidelines applicable to the people, product, property, and supply chain pathway.

Failing to Plan Is Planning to Fail

To get a complete picture of your security profile, you should schedule a professional assessment that will evaluate the technical, physical, personnel, and procedural security measures currently in place at your place of business. You’ll find out what you’re doing well and where you’re exposed to unnecessary risk as well as receive recommendations and strategic considerations with next steps to protect critical components of your processes—especially where vulnerabilities currently exist. Also, this assessment will identify what, if any, security and safety measures or systems are needed now or should be introduced at a later date.

Nothing Fits Better Than a Tailor Made Plan

We can also work with you to construct a tailor made marijuana security plan that addresses specific areas of concern, such as transportation, storage, access control, credentialing, security officers, cameras, alarms, and internal theft, and provides you with a planned response and recovery in case the unexpected happens.

Do you have a marijuana security plan to protect your people, property, permit, and product? All plans start with an assessment to ensure your operations reflect best practices in safety, security, and emergency management and protect against all hazards, such as a crime, weather, accident, or utility failure.

We can design a plan that’s right for your culture and, most importantly, protects your people. Contact me, Mike Verden, Owner and CEO of The Lake Forest Group, at [email protected] or 312.515.8747 to find out more—or share this article with anyone who needs to create a marijuana security plan to safeguard their business, employees, customers,  and assets.


Hospital Security: Doctor’s Orders

Because a medical campus is typically an open environment designed to accommodate patients, visitors, employees, practitioners, and staff, many hospitals face the challenge of balancing the need to present a friendly and welcoming property with the right combination of security measures to ensure safety. They do not want to create a security climate where people are reluctant to visit the facility because they are uncomfortable or afraid. In addition to the basic fundamentals of security—physical, technical, personnel, and procedural—administrators need to develop an understanding and renewed focus on the security disciplines unique to hospitals and medical facilities.

Are Your Operations a Best-Practice?

The single most effective and proficient way to protect your hospital’s people, assets, and operations is a systematic, step-by-step, and holistic process that begins by supporting the security department. Our recommended program development reflects a strategic approach based on industry best practices in hospital security operations. And one of the first tasks is to benchmark your hospital with nationally recognized healthcare security design and risk mitigation strategies currently being implemented by hospitals of comparable size and geographical location.

An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Cure

A prevention-oriented methodology results in a higher level of situational awareness and emergency readiness. Prevention begins in the early stages of planning and continues daily through the acquisition of real-time insight into the operations of the hospital. Preventative measures need to be scalable, flexible, and adaptable based on dynamics such as emerging threats, actionable intelligence, or changes to the environment. This process can only be attained by ongoing coordination with hospital staff; adherence to security best practices; compliance with regulatory standards; and leveraging technology to mitigate risk.

Give Them a Taste of Their Own Medicine

Based on my own experience of assessing medical facilities, your two most critical points to address are visitor access control and patient management. Starting with visitors, you need to establish a structured management protocol for all guests, including family, friends, and part-time employees. A database with individual identifiers should be used to record visits and screen for prohibited visitors. Technology can be used to monitor and manage patients, especially infants and seniors. Because many hospitals are concerned with baby abductions and elderly people wandering away from the facility, a tracking device could alert security and trace their location if the patient attempts to leave the hospital without authorization.

Take Two Aspirin and Call Me in the Morning 

Another security issue distinctive to healthcare properties is that transients will sometimes seek shelter inside the hospital. Some facilities are more tolerant than others and allow destitute people a safe haven, usually during the colder months. Although this is an honorable gesture, the result can be an increase in thefts and disruption in efficiency and workflow. Hospitals can maintain their level of safety and control if they provide some food or drink and point these visitors to the nearest homeless shelter.

While your security plan should address necessities such as alarm systems and security guards, you must also promote policies and procedures that control access and manage risk—in order to provide a best-practiced based security environment.


Arena and Stadium Security Requires Protecting People, Property, and Assets

The tragic event this week in Manchester, England at an arena filled with families and children attending a concert reminds us of the evil of terrorism. The attack by a suicide bomber was Europe’s 13th terrorist incident since 2015. As ISIS claims responsibility, it calls for supporters to strike anywhere and with whatever weapons possible—vehicle, firearm, or explosive—showing us once again that this danger is real with no signs of going away. My professional experiences have taught me how to effectively plan, prepare and implement multi-disciplinary security measures to counter this threat. Remember, security has to be right all the time, but the terrorist only needs to be right once.

High Profile = High Risk   

Large-scale venues, such as an arena in Manchester, stadium in Paris, or major league ballpark in the U.S., are prime targets due to the high volume of people in a condensed area. A terrorist who wants to inflict as much damage as possible to numerous victims is drawn to these types of facilities, especially a high-profile site like an iconic sports venue. Protecting buildings and properties this big is no easy task but risk can be controlled and lives can be protected with the right combination of knowledge, experience, and resources. The key to safeguarding a large piece of real estate is the strategic placement of security assets, which can only be learned from real world experience.          

Your Plan Needs to be Tailored, Customized, Reasonable, and Effective

After years of protecting large-scale operations and major events on a global stage with both the Secret Service and as a security consultant, I understand that a large-scale venue security plan requires appropriate countermeasures to mitigate the various types of hazards and ensure the safety of both the people attending the event and the operation of the venue. With that understanding, a security plan needs to be uniquely tailored to the environment and culture of the property. The Lake Forest Group’s security planning follows a developed and still evolving process based on the 35+ years of experience in law enforcement, security, legal, and human resources of our team.

The Six Pillars of Large-Scale Venue Security Design You Must Consider

The design, creation, and implementation of a large-scale venue security plan begins with an on-site assessment of the site to evaluate risk in six crucial areas:

  1. Personnel security: chain-of-command, manpower, staffing, posts, and supervision
  2. Systems technology: alarms, access control, cameras, monitoring, X-ray screening, metal detectors, and command center capabilities
  3. Physical security: fencing, gates, barriers, locks, windows, and hardware
  4. Processes: security policies, operational protocols, access control, parking, transportation, player/performer protection, crowd control, and guest management
  5. Emergency preparedness: emergency management, incident response, lockdown, shelter, evacuation, and relocation
  6. Liaison with critical third parties and first responders
Leveraging All of the Assets and Resources of the Federal Government

Given the current nature of the terrorist threat and the severity of the consequences associated with many potential attack scenarios, the private sector will need to look to organizations within the U. S. government for intelligence information at critical times. In order to offer you maximum protection, The Lake Forest Group works in collaboration with international, federal, state, and local entities to convene and schedule meetings; develop, write, and disseminate security plans, emergency management procedures, continuity of operations plans, roles and responsibilities of agencies and private sector partners, and counter surveillance plans, among others; and provide daily on-the-ground assistance to meet our client’s goals and objectives and produce a safe and positive environment for participants, guests, employees, and all in attendance.

A Preventative Protective Security Methodology Balances Ends, Ways, and Means 

Ultimately, successful security planning and event management focus on a preventative protective security methodology that balances ends, ways, and means, using the appropriate personnel to identify and assess targeted threats and create enhanced countermeasures to mitigate risk. The Lake Forest Group has provided trusted counsel and thought leadership to our clients by successfully securing professional sports and collegiate stadiums and arenas, corporate offices, industrial plants, commercial properties, government venues, entertainment sites, medical facilities, and academic institutions across the country and around the globe.


Spotlight on Residential Security

The tragic murders of the Savopoulos family and their housekeeper in Washington, D.C. unfortunately show us how high net worth people are at risk to be targets of potentially violent crime. As of today, two persons of interest have been identified—one is a former employee and the other suspect a current one. As the facts continue to surface, we won’t be surprised to learn that this was premeditated, coordinated, rehearsed, and conspired by at least two individuals and possibly others. The main suspect has an arrest record that includes harassment, concealed weapons, theft, and violating an order of protection. The other suspect has bounced around from job to job, was fired by his previous employer, and had been recently hired to do odd jobs for the family. The checkered pasts of these two individuals fit the characteristics of what we see in many insider threat cases. An arrest record, unstable work history, job terminations, and access to weapons are some common denominators. And where these two subjects previously crossed paths provides pieces to a puzzle that has ultimately landed them as suspects in the torture and deaths of innocent people.

Executives Benefit from a Residential Security Assessment

After conducting countless residential security assessments for senior-level executives of major corporations, I have found the number one concern of these individuals is the personal safety of their families. In order to deliver the highest value possible to each engagement, I uniquely tailor the project to best serve my client by beginning with a framework for the assessment that is extremely flexible and adaptable to the environment. The structure then follows a developed and still evolving outline that leverages more than 30 years in the law enforcement and security fields and is based on four main pillars: 1) physical security, 2) technical security, 3) network security, and 4) procedural security. These assessments include an on-site security survey of the residence including the building, property, and its outer perimeter; the risks, threats, and vulnerabilities potentially impacting the safety and security of the home along with the occupants and guests; countermeasures and strategies for risk transfer, avoidance, mitigation, or acceptance; and detailed risk mitigation considerations.

A Prime Example of Insider Threat 

In 2008, the Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) and the CERT® Program (CERT) of Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute collaborated on the Insider Threat Study (ITS) in the cyber security realm. The study focused on employees who committed illegal or unauthorized acts against organizations using a computer, system, or network, such as theft of intellectual property, fraud, and acts of sabotage within critical infrastructure sectors. This research found that current and former employees carried out insider activities in nearly equal numbers, many of these individuals had prior arrests, and a specific work-related event triggered the actions of most insiders—all of which are eerily applicable to what has been uncovered in the Savopoulos case.

How You Can Protect Your Home and Family 

So what can we learn from this incident to help prevent future tragedies? First, whether you’re the founder of a multi-million dollar company or a private homeowner, you need to know the people you come into contact with every day and, more importantly, have access to your home. Your list might include landscapers, cleaning ladies, nannies, dog walkers, and contractors, to name a few. Before any of these people set foot on your property, you have to ensure their backgrounds have been properly screened by their employer. If they are sole proprietors, they must provide proof of passing a background check and establishing legal residency, if applicable. These checks should not be more than three years old and should include, at a minimum, criminal history, civil litigation, and drug testing.

A professional and comprehensive residential security assessment will evaluate the technical, physical, and cyber security measures of your home. When you follow the recommendations of the key takeaways, you will not only help safeguard your home and family from a preventative standpoint, but you will also have a planned response and recovery to any type of nefarious event occurring on your private property. Corporate leaders need to be aware that danger is not only found in the workplace or while travelling abroad; it can also occur in their own backyard.


How Safe Is Your School? Security 101

While fall ushers in Indian summer, football season, and autumn leaves, it also means back to school for millions of students everywhere. Mixed into the list of school essentials like laptops, backpacks, and books is the need for security measures that safeguard the administrators, teachers, and children who spend most of their day in a scholastic setting. Since recent history has unfortunately shown us that tragic events can occur on any size campus—from universities like Virginia Tech to high schools like Columbine to elementary schools like Sandy Hook—we need to be prepared to mitigate the situations that threaten our schools and the people in them.

You Can Increase Security through Education, Awareness, and Training    

The educational environment is a unique culture distinguished by above-average attrition (e.g., students, faculty), high visitor volume (e.g., substitute teachers, parents), open settings (e.g., playgrounds, courtyards), and long hours of operation (e.g., day and night classes, extracurricular activities). While protecting people, property, and assets based on these dynamics is a formidable challenge, you can control risk through education, awareness, and training. Because your security is only as good as the consciousness of the constituents who occupy the venue on a daily basis, the best way to raise their security and safety acumen is by creating and maintaining a continuously updated education, awareness, and training program built by best practices and industry benchmarking.

It’s Time to Hit the Books to Build Your Security Program

So, what should go into your education, awareness, and training program? Start with training on: emergency evacuation, shelter-in-place, campus lockdowns, and active shooter. Then move to awareness material that focuses on visitor registration, restricted access, parking requirements, prohibited items, and student drop-off and pick-up. And round it up with educational content that offers information on drug and alcohol abuse, workplace violence, sexual harassment, and suicide prevention. One of the goals of your program is to stay up-to-date on emerging threats and concerns related to your institution, which can only be accomplished by continuous reading, research, and networking with experts in these fields.

Use All Your Resources to Support Safety in School

Technical security solutions such as closed-circuit television, automated access control, intrusion detection, emergency notification, and panic alarms should also be incorporated into safeguarding a school property. These systems working in combination with security-related policies, procedures, processes, personnel, and physical standards will produce the desired outcome—an integration of protective measures resulting in a holistic security posture. Not only is it essential to have all of these recommended security features, but it is also equally important that the appropriate people are properly trained on their use.        

Work with a Partner to Create Safe Schools All Year Long

You’ll feel confident to handle threats to your school when you feel confident in your plan. And creating an effective plan takes time. Start by identifying a security professional with experience in securing campuses and adapting best practices to your specific location. Of course summertime is the perfect time to evaluate and modify all of your safety and security policies, processes, programs and systems so you can roll out any changes when the school year begins. But you shouldn’t wait until next year to start your plan. You can schedule an orientation for your students and employees and inform parents, police, fire, and other external stakeholders whenever it feels right. Security is a 24/7 undertaking and your commitment to learning, teaching, training, and awareness should always be in session.


Protecting the C-Suite from the Tax Man

If Executive Protection is one of your security roles, you need to be up to date on the latest best practices to maximize security and minimize risk—in the most cost-effective and efficient way possible. An Independent Security Study will help select executives in your company avoid unnecessary tax liability and at the same time assess your company’s security environment while providing great value to you in your role as a corporate security professional.

Why Do You Need an Independent Security Study?

Your Executive Protection might include air travel, airport protection, ground transportation, and a travelling protective detail to ensure the safety of company executives, especially if they travel internationally. The IRS will tax the gross income of those executives for transportation security costs—unless you can show a bona fide business-oriented security concern for the protection provided. An Independent Security Study meets the necessary requirements for the IRS to avoid this tax—and saves your CEO money.

You Can’t Conduct the Study Yourself

An important part of the IRS compliance is that the study is done by an outsider, e.g., independent consultant. You can’t conduct your own assessment. The Independent Security Study is based on an objective assessment of all facts and circumstances and the employer applies the specific security recommendations contained in the security study to the employee on a consistent basis.

An Independent Security Study Benefits You and Your Organization

The net result of the Independent Security Study conducted by an independent consultant is an evaluation of your personnel, programs, policies, technologies, operations, and current security environment to identify areas of strength along with opportunities for improvement. In addition, your compliance with the IRS showing the security you provide your executives is part of an overall security program also benefits you and your organization.

What Are the IRS and Tax Connections to the Study?

The Independent Security Study is tailored to fulfill IRS statutory requirements as they relate to validating employer-provided transportation for business-oriented security concerns and overall security programs. The Independent Security Study documents employer-provided transportation for security concerns for corporations seeking to specifically exclude security-related cost and items from the executive’s gross income. 


Supply Chain Security Is Only as Strong as Its Weakest Link

A supply chain is only as strong or efficient as its weakest link, whether that’s a policy, process, or person. Successful supply chain security requires a constant effort to stay knowledgeable and current with the most effective security countermeasures against emerging threats while at the same time continuing to develop and run operations in the most effective and efficient way possible.

How do you know if your supply chain is at a best practice based level? Your specific strategic supply chain security objectives can be achieved after an independent and comprehensive assessment of the physical, technical, procedural, and personnel security measures currently in place. After conducting numerous supply chain engagements in the private sector, I have gained access to comparable organizations in both similar and disparate industries and can routinely benchmark those operations against yours—offering you valuable insight.

Trust the Process

When I assess your supply chain’s movement of materials out of the organization to the end consumer, I apply the benefits of best practice-based security disciplines, including a supply chain risk management strategy tailored specifically to your culture and environment. Because we know that successful supply chain security requires a change from managing individual functions to integrating activities into key processes, we show you how to exploit existing assets through improved coordination.

In order to enhance supply chain security, you need to:

Conduct an on-site security survey of buildings and properties;

Examine risks, threats, and vulnerabilities affecting the supply chain;

Consider suggested modifications along with operational enhancements;

Develop additional strategies for protection from accidental and intentional theft, diversion, and tampering;

Create a detailed timeline to implement strategic recommendations; and

Accept continued support from a trusted security advisor.

The Wheels on the Truck Go Round and Round

A critical link to successful supply chain security focuses on ground and air transportation and the third-party companies that typically supply these services. After conducting a thorough process review of the carriers that are under contract and how each customer receives delivery of product, you’ll be able to develop cargo theft awareness and mitigation strategies for third-party carriers, further strengthening your security posture.

The screening of third-party suppliers and vendors should result in a list of approved providers with current data on standards, performance, areas of concern, or product-related issues. Also, all contractors, vendors, and third-party providers are responsible for providing current proof of successful background screening for their personnel who require access to the supply chain product.

Do As I Say and As I Do

Make sure you do what you say you’re going to do when it comes to your supply chain security strategy. It’s not enough to construct and distribute current best practice-based guidelines to all relevant internal and external entitiesyou must also ensure that these standards are clearly understood and followed completely.

When you implement a standardized process, you can mitigate risk on various levels, which is not only important for compliance reasons, but can also save you money. A coordinated, strategy-driven approach provides significant business benefits over time, such as operational improvement, fiscal efficiency, and decreased risk, and should be well defined and continuously reviewed, modified, and updated to ensure best-in-class industry supply chain security disciplines.

Do you have the resources, staffing, and expertise to plan, prepare, and implement a holistic supply chain security strategy within your organization? The Lake Forest Group is here to help. We’ll provide the necessary insight and hands-on advice that lead to tangible results—and help to ensure the integrity of your supply chain. To find out how we can address your particular security challenge, contact me at [email protected] or 312.515.8747. Or share this blog post with someone who wants to improve their security program.


Stopping an Active Shooter Is More Than Run, Hide, Fight

Unfortunately, our country continues to be plagued by horrific active shooter incidents such as what occurred at the Ft. Lauderdale Airport last week as we remember those who lost their lives or were injured in the attack. Because of the constant reoccurrence of these tragedies, the Department of Homeland Security created the action phrase  ̶ ̶  Run, Hide, Fight. These instructions have become almost instinctive and such a key part of our culture that under extreme duress, such as an active shooter incident, ordinary citizens know how to react appropriately. And this knowledge of what to do will hopefully save their lives and possibly the lives of others.

Although I acknowledge the importance of Run, Hide, Fight, I also understand how much more needs to be considered in order to protect ourselves against an active shooter. Run, Hide, Fight instructs us primarily on what to do during an incident, but what also needs to be taught is how to prevent the incident from occurring in the first place. The year 2017 offers us an opportunity to pause, reassess, and look at two critical elements associated with active shooters—cause and mitigation.

Starting at the Beginning Is a Good Place to Start

After an active shooter incident occurs, the post-incident investigation traces the history of the shooter to determine possible association to the victims and the scene of the crime and often reveals a number of clues that show the active shooter was on a pathway to violence. Some of these warning signs include inappropriate posts or disturbing videos on social media, violent outbursts, threatening comments, and dramatic changes in appearance.

Because each of these incidents needs to stand on its own, we don’t have a universally accepted profile to identify a potential active shooter—so having the preventative strategies in place before an incident offers one key measure to mitigating it. If you know what indicators to look for and have access to professional assistance, such as mental health services, you may be able to determine if intervention is necessary. Any of these signs could be an indication of a much more serious problem that may require identification, assessment, and management of a potential violent situation by a team of professionals with a diverse skill set.

Failing to Plan Is Planning to Fail  

So far, I’ve talked about what to do during an active shooter scenario (run, hide, fight) and the actions to take to prevent irregular behavior (identify, assess, manage) from deteriorating into an act of violence. A holistic strategy will feature all of these recommendations along with a number of other preventative disciplines in order to deter, delay, or deny the possible occurrence of an active shooter incident.

You can help to efficiently and effectively ensure safety and security with the proper planning, awareness, education and training necessary to respond to an active shooter. And the best way to implement these measures is to capture the essential processes in an Active Shooter Plan. The plan needs to be adaptable to circumstances, innovative, and, when necessary, improvisational and ideally prepares everyone for all hazards—natural, accidental, and intentional.

One Is the Loneliest Number  

A site-specific Active Shooter Plan, such as for a commercial property or higher education campus, is not created by one person, or even a small group of people. In other words, your plan isn’t written in a vacuum. A multi-disciplinary approach is required and demands collaboration between internal and external stakeholders that are invested in the process. Individuals with diverse backgrounds, skill sets, and experience can come together and work side-by-side to design a plan to mitigate this threat. In-house staff can include security, legal, HR, facilities, maintenance, and emergency management while outside constituents are typically contract security, law enforcement, fire department, medical, and local emergency managers.