My professional experience with firearms started when I was 17 years old, and I joined an Infantry Regiment in the British Army. After leaving the British Army five years later, I worked in an armed capacity in numerous countries while providing security services.
A New Standard for Travel Security
As Executive Protection professionals we are constantly caught between a rock and a hard place. We do our best to provide our clients with the best possible protection while dealing with resistance and objections from the boardroom, PAs or the client themselves. Now if there was an international guideline for a travel risk management standard that addressed everything from hotels to air travel and ground transportation, it would require compliance from organizations and simplify our task significantly. The good news is, there now is and it is planned for launch in the summer of 2021.
Tactical Reloading & Stoppage Drills
At some point you will have to reload your handgun and clear stoppages and misfires. If you are on a nice comfortable range doing some target practice, this is not a problem. But if you are involved in a serious hostile situation, your reload and stoppage drills need to be slick and well-rehearsed.
In the Midst of Chaos
By now many of you have seen the photos and videos of the protestors turned rioters storming the US Capitol on the day of the Congressional Certification.
HUMAN INTELLIGENCE
Intelligence is the information we obtain on a target or threat in order to locate them, gain information on their operations and to predict their future actions. Accurate intelligence is essential not only in security and counter-insurgency operations but also in the corporate world where companies need to know what their competitors are developing and planning.
Online Health Check for Protectors
As security professionals you may be an attack vector to your client if you do not maintain basic online security controls. At the very least you should be in a position to provide basic advice to your clients in order to help them stay secure.
Phishing Phenomena on the Rise
As with many methods used to manipulate, they do not try to argue someone around to a position in a rational manner; instead, they are designed to elicit and exploit emotional responses.
Phishing is a whole family of different attacks designed to manipulate a target into performing actions against their best interest, usually disclosing information in some way or carrying out fraudulent transactions. Within that family of different types of phishing we have:
Crisis Management and Social Media
Effective crisis management invariably involves social media, whether the organization is a large multi-national or a small hometown business. When a crisis erupts, the effective use of social media should be seen as a key priority to counteract the crisis.
The Key Elements of Counter Surveillance
Counter Surveillance is defined as the actions that a person (or team) carries out, in order to detect that a person (Principal) is under surveillance and to identify the composition and makeup of a hostile surveillance team.
In this article, Pete Jenkins talks through the key principles of a counter-surveillance operation.
Cyber Security
Especially while many people are still remote, technology has become more and more central to people’s lives, and we are talking about ways that things will or will not return to normal. As we hear about more and more cyber security incidents, each supposedly carried out by ‘sophisticated threat actors with unprecedented capabilities’, it’s time to talk about the mystique of cyber security and the problem it has with public perception.
Ransomware, Insurance, and Backups
Most people are not aware of the real impact and threat of ransomware campaigns going on almost constantly. While I’m sure everyone knows of the ransomware attack on the Colonial pipeline and the more recent similar attack on JBS, these are only the latest and most visible in a continuous stream of attacks. These are just the tip of the iceberg. The true scale is hidden not only by the media but also by a reluctance to talk about the problem.
Technology as a Standalone Security Solution – Are We Fooling Ourselves?
Is technology effective as a security solution or is it simply being misused? In this article, Ivor Terret shares his philosophy of the four pillars of effective and practical security and how they can only work together in conjunction – not as silos.
Introduction to Steganography
All the techniques of steganography share one core concept, trying to hide a message. When children draw stick figures as secret messages to each other, they are practicing steganography. Modern steganography is usually a lot more malicious. It is used in malware command and control and the exchange of illicit information and material. If you do not know where to look it is frighteningly hard to detect.
Tactical Firearms – Methods of Carry!
If you are carrying a handgun for defensive purposes, you need to be able to get to it when you need it.
On the market today, there is a wide variety of holsters to choose from that vary in price from a few bucks to a few hundred; some are worth it, many are not. What most people forget when considering carry techniques for a handgun or any weapons for that matter is that they are going to have to be able to access the weapon in all environments with both strong and weak hands.
Global Situation Report April 2021
Each issue our global geopolitical partner, Stratfor, provides an in-depth analysis of global incidents via in-house experts, cutting edge technology and through a comprehensive globally sourced network. Here is your summary from the last 30 days.
How anonymous are your conversations, really?
Maybe you’re a close protection officer, trying to arrange a safe route through a dangerous location, or a surveillance specialist trying to communicate with others in your team.
Perhaps you just don’t trust the local government. Whatever the situation, it’ll almost certainly be easier to focus on the task at hand if you aren’t worrying about whether your messages were possibly subject to being intercepted.
Cyber Security and Humans
Over 2020 cyber security and technology have only soared in terms of profile and importance, with talk about threats to remote working from technology, difficulties, and some dramatic outages. Logistics, enabled largely by technology, have been essential to keep things moving and give people support and normality.
Global Situation Report
Each issue our global geopolitical partner, Stratfor, provides an in-depth analysis of global incidents via in-house experts, cutting edge technology, and through a comprehensive globally sourced network. Here is your summary for the last 30 days. West Africa: Al Qaeda Is Expanding Operations in Benin and Ivory Coast Feb 2, 2021 France’s intelligence chief, Bernard […]
Industry News
We cast our eye over the main stories impacting the security industry. Here’s what’s appeared on the radar since the last issue.
Insecure Smart Houses
They are only of limited relevance today, but as the technologies involved become more widespread and implemented into every facet of life they will only become more prevalent. While it sounds like the stuff of science fiction, these threats exist now and are not going to go away.
For simplicity, we’ll say that a ‘smart’ device is anything which connects to the internet (or a network) and is not intended to be a computer interface. Intended is the key word there, as many of these devices are insecure for the simple reason that they are a computer. The problem is that it is now cheaper and easier to put a general purpose computer into a device and run some software to, for example, turn lights on and off than it is to design a single-purpose lightbulb which also connects to a network.
