Good morning, good day, wherever you are in the world, ladies and gentlemen, nice to be talking to you. What we're going to do is less than three of the physical security course, which is critical thinking you may be wondering why doing it and the need to learn or refresh yourselves about critical thinking. And so it's, it's actually a very important part. We're going to discuss that obviously in a little bit more detail. So here we are on number three falling off in the introduction to foundations critical thinking. Next is threat assessment.

And then we're going to go into three fact four, because lesson four is, is cut into two parts, two long parts. So we're going to do the next chunk is going to be the threat assessment. We're looking at threat assessment setup process threat lists. I showed you an introduction, there's two sort of sides the slide with a long, long list of potential threats. And that's what we're going to discuss a bit more detail, then we're going to go into measuring and prioritizing the threats. And the reason why critical thinking is ahead of this is because you have to be able to look at the threats, the potential threats, critically.

So most people are scared about terrorism naturally. What they don't take into account or they they can't, because the media keeps pushing it is that it may only happen once every five years may wherever they are in the world. It may only happen once a year, and even then, it's one part of the country or one part of the town that it happens in. So realistically, it's not a very high threat when it happens, and certainly if it happens when you're nearby. It's It's horrible. It does become immediately a high threat.

But you've got much, much, much more chance of being hurt, badly injured or even killed in a road traffic accident than you do to that terrorist attack. So you have to look at all the component parts very critically and say realistically, is terrorism number one, or should it be down on 23 or 24 bottom of the list because it doesn't happen that that much and this sort of goes into looking at things a bit more realistically look at them critically. And also, avoiding bias for some of the things that you may, you may well be slightly biased about. And that's, that's a common factor. We're all biased about something rather, whether it's ice cream, or different types of sausages. So some more definitions, sorry about this.

Again, read them over. And you've got the potential to read the handout so you take your time, but and there's no test for someone I don't know where you're gonna test your knowledge of the definitions. I'm more interested in your understanding of the definition. So if you understand the difference between safety and security, it's it's quite important if you understand what proactive means is very important. And in no way will you ever be tested on unless you do a degree I suppose. Your your word for work definition, but your understanding is valuable to doing the role.

We're going to identify and clarify the problems. Sorry, this is this is what we think what critical thinking is, identify and clarify the problem. gather the information, evaluate the evidence, consider alternatives and implications and choose and implement the best alternatives. And this is as important this process is as important as critically evaluating what the threats are. So thinking biases. We there are lots of different biases and they're explained much more in the handout.

So I'm not going to go over each and every one. But it means that when you look at an issue, look at a problem. You may have some bias that affects your assessment affects the outcome of your thought process. And it may be that, for instances take these stairs and the poor lighting, it may be that you think the staff should be smarter than that and carry flashlights around with them so that in the event of any emergency where it's dark, they can get their flashlights now. They may not have the benefits of you your experience and your training and your day to day knowledge of safe In security, and so that bias of thought your expectations of what the staff should know and what the staff should carry with them, and how the staff should respond to an emergency is slightly biased based on your expectations.

And read read out what, what the handout goes into a little bit more detail. And we'll cover that. So you have to think strategically, strategically is the big picture, the overview. When you look at crisis management planning, for instance, strategically is from the headquarters office downwards. How could crises impact on the headquarters and the company as a whole, it could be on a regional level, it could be at a worldwide level, but it's a big picture overview of what happens in the event of an incident in such a such Contrary, what impact does that have to the company as a whole, whereas security managers in office locations are more focused on the tactical stuff, the grounds, do ground truth stuff. So start to think a little bit more strategically rather than just the day to day nuts and bolts of your safety and security.

So, you have to understand what your objective is. If your objective is to improve driving, and minimize or reduce, avoid road traffic accidents as much as possible, that could be your objective. So your strategies would be negotiation. Talking to the staff, briefing them up, talk to the bosses, how can we better encourage and maybe even Force Staff to wear their seat belts in cars I've been in cars with x pack staff from Canada and the US don't wear their seatbelts in a third world country. My concerns are let me talk strategically through my concerns. So as a security manager in a car lots people I put my seatbelt on and they don't.

The driver drive longer. 60 miles an hour he hits car coming the other way. Combined speed of 60 miles an hour, 120 miles an hour. I've got my seatbelt on, the driver doesn't drive it goes through the front windscreen and whatever injury and damage is caused to him. Maybe it's the other car coming the opposite direction. The three people behind me not wearing a seat belts will come forward and will probably kill me on the way past because the combined speeds are 120 miles an hour.

There's no way they're going to hold on to the seats, stop it or even react in time. So I'm probably gonna die anyway whether I'm what am I saying? So the only option is encourage every single person to wear their seatbelts. Now, some drivers in a lot of countries don't like to wear their seatbelts. It's sometimes it's a status thing I've been to Istanbul. The taxi driver was offended when I put my seatbelt on because he saw it as a reflection on his driving skills.

And it wasn't reflecting on his driving skills because they were pretty bad. He obviously thought differently. So I'm starting to give an overview. And so talk through I think through an overview of what happens what actually physically happens in an accident. I've been to Papua New Guinea, where the driver was driving along you speeding through a village a kid ran across the front of the vehicle, I lost sight of the kid below the bonnet, and I thought we hit it. Now in Papua New Guinea, there's a history of violence of road accidents.

So the Standing Order was keep going down. Stop, find out what's wrong with the kid because the villagers will be out in a flash. Probably torture vehicle may well kill everyone in the vehicle. And that's just the way it's been forever. Keep going not just the next release to the next few weeks after that reported to the police as quick as possible. So there's a whole big picture to road traffic accidents, so you have to think strategically and then then say the Papua New Guinea scenario, you're looking at reputation.

If your organization run a child over in the village, what's the reputational risk to me you're going to be all over it's going to be on social media, it's going to be reported to headquarters, it could affect business continuity, because the donor or your business partners might pull the plug because of the bad press you getting. Oh my god, there's so many different things. So you have to look at the overall strategic picture. And you start discussing that was tough. One of the good ways I've I've noticed of briefing staff up about road safety is to actually sit them down in front of the TV screen and run some YouTube videos. So excellent YouTube video, Australians probably seem to do very good public safety videos about wearing your seatbelt.

And they're very graphic. And what I think problem is people either don't understand what happens in a road accident, don't understand the seriousness of the injuries you can get. There was too much tea and TV and see cars rolling over and people just stepping out and brushing off the dust and then moving on to the next thing. Or they just ignore the facts of what could potentially happen. And the same with fires. There were lots of other safety and security concerns.

So mobilizing public sentiment. So talking to your staff, talking to your bosses, telling you bosses you can reduce the impact on reputational risk business continuity. reduce the threat to staff by various pretty simple methods. And you may another strategy is working with other organizations here it says working with a military law enforcers to locate staff member that could be you work with partners about safety? It could, staff could travel with partners a lot, and you want them to have the same standards you want wherever the staff go to have the same standards as you would expect them to have, if not better. So tactically you would negotiate with people, you'd open up lines of communications.

This is this is on sort of this talk about kidnap for ransom, contact insurance companies kidnap and ransom context specialists. And so with the driving scenario, if you have higher costs, or use taxes, then speak to them and district us, the fact that they will lose your business if they don't drive within the law, use seatbelts don't drive until everyone in the vehicle including the driver has their seatbelts on. And if they get reported by a member of staff, then they will potentially lose business. And that's the that's the strategy. The strategy is to reduce the impacts of stuff, road traffic accidents, the taxes are to start speaking, the sap start changing the policies and procedures may be the rules and regulations have an SRP for driving as I've discussed the previous and then the slide discusses a little bit on the kidnap for ransom stuff as well, which is a lot less likely to happen.

So you've got two potential scenarios thinking strategically. So your objectives strategies should always come before tactics. So what that means is don't necessarily start to change the nuts and bolts of stuff, until you've actually changed to this Strategic stuff. So your objective is to reduce the risk of threat of road traffic accidents. Your strategy is going to be increasing briefings to the staff encourage them the weather seatbelts changes the policy and procedures establish some standard operating procedures and paperwork so that they know the rules and regulations and then you start to implement that at the ground level. So you start checking on them, you start speaking to the drivers are they when are they actually wearing your seatbelts?

In some countries, some organizations they have tracking on vehicles not just to track where the vehicles are because they go into some risky places. And but also it keeps an eye on the speed of the vehicle and how erratic the driving is by measuring the time and distance, so you can you can clearly see that the drivers took a different route, for instance, that they said they were going on which is dangerous because if you have To go look for them, you're looking in totally the wrong place. If they're speeding, and they say they're not, you've got proof to say they're speeding. So there's different ways the tactical level you can start to implement these things. First of all, you ask them nicely, then when they don't improve, which should in turn reduce injuries to staff reduce accident levels, then you have to start enforcing stuff and there's different measures of doing that on the tactical level.

So that's a very quick sort of talk through this go through the kidnapping scenario. Sorry, the kidnap and ransom scenario. I'm gonna go back because I mentioned it on slides and I went off on a tangent and talked about road traffic accidents. I talked about road traffic accidents, because as I've said in the past, these are your day to day most likely instance, kidnappings not so much depends where you are in the world. You're seeing the threat That the threat low the threats for kidnapping, I break them down to local nationals and x pack staff. The risk could be the same, depending where you are in the world.

But in some countries, the threat to local national staff is actually higher. And it's more like a cottage industry. So family members are kidnapped. The gang members contact the family, the families get some cash together, and the person is released. And that's the way it's been for decades and decades and maybe even centuries. And it's almost an established business model.

Sad to say. So well, that's why I split it down because you couldn't have an ex parte it becomes slightly different. It could be that in the minds of the kidnappers, the ex parte is worth more, so they're going to get more money back, but it's more complicated. It's going to draw More police interest and more media interest. Do they really want that interest? A lot of a lot of places they don't.

But also, they may have additional value in the fact that they can sell that person on to other groups, sometimes to terrorist groups, who will pay millions for an X pack, for instance. So there's lots of different complications, which is why I sometimes break it down local national and x pack. There's not not a value difference. I mean, there may well be as far as the criminals concerned, there's a staff member there's not a value difference, but it means that there comes with additional complications and simplicity of staff member being kidnapped can be totally different compared to an expat. So you're looking at it strategically and critically, your objective is to reduce the chances of kidnapping And being able to manage a kidnapping if it happens. So if it happens, your strategies would be in negotiation, mobilize public sentiment, that may be a police issue, and it may not be something that's recommended.

Because a lot of instances, criminal gangs, terrorist gangs do not want publicity. They obviously want to keep police attention to a minimum. It may be that at some point, they will put out a video of the kidnap victim onto YouTube or some other social media. And obviously, that's going to draw public attention. But maybe they can be a security manager that could be an undercurrent of mobilizing public sentiment, which in turn may improve communications between negotiations between you and the kidnappers. Typically And again, it varies country to country.

Typically the police will deal with it. I've been involved in kidnappings, where they fly police in from Europe. And probably they will set up the 24 hour watch room, they'll set up all the equipment, they don't deal directly with the kidnappers, but they'll advise you what to say and what not to say. So each situation can be totally different. And also know you will have your insurance company, if you have insurance, there'll be involved at more at the strategic level. So as far as strategy goes, it will also be joined on the experience of the insurance company, and pretty much what they want, don't want and then you'll work with military law enforcement to try and locate your staff member.

We've seen the films where the the criminals say Do not tell the police do not tell anyone about this, otherwise they will die. I mean, that's that's a business decision. At this point, again, the strategy will be to, you've already told the home office like john Smith's been kidnapped. We've just been told we've received an email or a note through the gate that has been kidnapped and he's gone missing is not in his hotel. We haven't seen him for 24 hours. So there's there's there's a lot of issues.

And the note says don't speak to the police. So it's a business decision. Whether you speak to the police or not, in realistically, you should, because they've got much more assets, much more experience. But there may be some resistance on the business level, and that again, is part of your strategy. So the tactical level as far as kidnapping goes, you would negotiate the processes the same maintain your laser lines of communication with the captors. So you don't you wouldn't be arguing with insurance companies that says there.

That's not necessarily I mean, you would contact them on a day to day basis at the tactical level at the ground level. But strategically you have already included them if you have kidnap and ransom insurance, because they have access to lots of specialists lots of experience. And if for instance, the victim is us, European foreign national, then you'd contact their embassy and you would support you would support your kidnap and ransom specialist if they came in. So that is pretty much the sort of basics as far as thinking strategically. So you look for object objective. The objective is to get the person back.

Strategies are we going to negotiate we may mobilize public sentiment we may get the police working Internally your you'd be telling the home office they would probably stand in the crisis management team up or maybe especially as kidnap team who deal have dealt, particularly with this sort of crisis or incident. tactical level day to day level and in negotiations, you'll be managing you'll be if you don't speak to the police, you will deal with the military and law enforcement, contacting the embassies and maintaining contact with them and supporting any Knr Sometimes though, there will fly people in hand that will that will help you out and support you and give you lots of advice based on their experience. So they the process is the same as road traffic accidents. You understand what your objective is to reduce the risk for travelers in cars and roads, strategies, and then the tactics and now is thinking strategically look from the top down, and then implement it at the ground level.

And that's, that's what critical thinking is. No. So read through, there was a long list of different types of critical thinking and that'll be in the, in the data. But look at each bit of security information that you get, look at each incident. think critically, don't get become biased about what you think staff should have done or shouldn't have done. Any incidents that do happen, you take the valid points from it, learn lessons, and improve the circumstances for the staff.

And if you think they're lacking in knowledge or experience, then use your skills to train them up to brief them up to be much more aware. That in turn reduces the risk of them. The threats overall. So hopefully I've explained that a little bit better than read through the handout. If you have any questions, feel free to send them to me, you know where I am. And the next section, we're going to go into much, much more detail about the various threats.

So you know, we just talked about road traffic accident, we just talked about a little bit about kidnapping, and how we would look at the issues from the top down. And now we're going to go into the nitty gritty about threats, and that's broken up into two component parts. As always, thank you very much for your time. Thanks for your attention. Speak soon.