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In the early hours of a December morning in New York City, a single shocking act of violence claimed the life of a well-known CEO and forced corporate America to face an unsettling reality — many corporate security teams are not adequately protecting their executives.
The brutal assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson will likely mark a turning point in how companies of all sizes approach and implement security plans for individual executives, key personnel, or small leadership teams. The attack is a jarring reminder that organizations across all industries are vulnerable to individual actors driven by malice.
With the increasingly polarized political climate in the U.S., threats and violence against leaders of both public and private corporations are likely to rise in the near future. As a result, thousands of entities across the U.S. are making substantial upgrades to their security strategies by allocating more money and resources to protect visible employees, regardless of title or responsibility.
Extending Protection and Security Assessments for Key Personnel
The Brian Thompson attack brought the topic of enterprise and corporate executive protection (EP) strategies into the national conversation and underscored the importance of safeguarding visible employees. Every organization needs a process to assess and review potential violence to determine the level of risk faced by all prominent personnel: C-suite leaders, HR executives, company spokespeople, and department managers.
These high-visibility roles unfortunately carry an inherent risk of targeted violence. The people who serve in these positions are often the ones trusted by the business to make tough decisions, which can attract both public scrutiny and internal pressure. As such, organizations need a clear process for assessing potential risks and evaluating the safety of all key personnel.
Identifying Executive Security Risks
Protecting an organization’s top employees begins with identifying the specific risks each individual may face and developing a proactive, multi-layered approach to prevent them from escalating into active threats. Warning signs such as disturbing calls, emails, or verbal attacks are often dismissed as unsubstantiated; but overlooking any red flag — no matter how minor it may seem — can have serious consequences. Regardless of their nature or perceived intention, any threat in the workplace must be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated, as they’re often identified after the fact as the origin of many violent incidents.
A well-trained security team with both psychological and investigative experience is essential to creating and implementing the proactive approach we believe in at Pinkerton. Psychological assessments can help identify the intent behind threats. Meanwhile, detailed investigations into persons of interest are conducted to pinpoint potential motives or underlying concerns behind an incident, such as social media activity or previous interactions with coworkers.
Reassessing Employee Safety Protocols and Visibility
Tasked with carefully balancing transparency with employee privacy, organizations and other institutions, such as government, NGOs, and schools, across the U.S. are wrestling with the visibility of executives and their personal information. Showcasing staff can offer value by boosting company culture and identity, but excessive sharing of personal details — especially on public platforms like social media or staff directory pages — can expose executives to unnecessary risks.
Unfortunately, sensitive information is already publicly available in many cases. Many details of high-level staffers, such as full names, hometowns, and background information, can easily be found by searching online and would be difficult — if not impossible — to remove.
Organizations can follow a few basic guidelines to safeguard employee information without sacrificing the feel of a personal touch. Instead of offering full names or personal information, companies could consider using only a first name and last initial for online content. They also may reconsider the necessity of using photographs for each staff bio page, instead using them for only public-facing employees.
The Best Solution: Risk Management for Executives and Key Personnel
While removing photos or limiting information on staff websites can help protect key employees, these tactics fail to proactively address underlying threats. The best solution for organizations is to develop comprehensive security threat assessment and management program that can quickly identify, assess, and manage threats made to employees.
If your organization is reviewing your existing plan or building new employee protection protocols, a trusted security partner can offer the expertise and corporate security consulting you need. With 175 years of expertise, Pinkerton delivers robust security programs, proactively identifying and assessing threats to keep executives and personnel safe. Learn more about how our experts can help.
