Threats in Context: Identify, Analyze, Anticipate begins with the premise that a risk assessment is relevant primarily—and hinges upon—the correct evaluation of the threat. According to the author, all the other stages of the risk evaluation are, in fact, dependent on getting the understanding and measurement of the threat right.
Despite this truism, many risk assessment methods (i.e., the process of determining the threat) tend to rush through a vague typology, offer minimal classifications, utilize an often-outdated list of potential malevolent actions—all of which are based on precedent occurrences. There should be a way to improve on this: a way to provide security practitioners and analysts better tools to deal with the task of analyzing threats and risk and to prepare for such contingencies appropriately.
The book begins with a retrospective on the threats from the 1960s through to the present. The list is long and includes hijackings and airport attacks, piracy, drug smuggling, attacks on trains, pipelines, city-wide multi-site attacks, road attacks, workplace shootings, lone wolf attacks, drone attacks, bombings, IEDs, sniper attacks, random stabbings, and more.
Terrorism, workplace violence, and active shooter scenarios all present asymmetric problems and unique challenges that require new ways of thinking, operationally, of risk to properly prevent, mitigate, and respond to such threats. The author demonstrates how to develop an appropriate methodology to define both current and emerging threats, providing a five-step process to self-evaluate—to determine an organization’s, a location’s, or a facility’s threats and to plan risk mitigation strategies to accurately identify, minimize, and neutralize such threats.
Coverage progressively builds from correctly identifying the root threats—both global and local—to a subsequent understanding of the corollary relationship between threat, vulnerability, and risk, with the threat serving as the fundamental cornerstone of the risk evaluation. As such, Threats in Context will serve as a pivotal resource to security professionals from all backgrounds serving in a variety of fields and industries.
Author(s): Jean Perois
Publisher: CRC Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 240
City: Boca Raton
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Notes
1 An Abridged History of Threats From the Late 60s to Today: A Retrospective
1.1 Selecting Attacks: On Which Criteria?
1.2 Why Are These Events Important?
1.3 Why Choose 1970 as a Starting Date?
1.4 Terror in the Air
1.4.1 Air Attacks
1.4.2 7 March 1970: Eastern Air Lines Shuttle Flight 1320
1.4.3 17 December 1973: Rome Airport Attacks and Hijacking
1.4.4 8 September 1974: TWA Flight 841 (Hijacking and Bombing)
1.4.5 January 1975: Paris-Orly Airport Attacks (Airport Attack)
1.4.6 2 June 1985: Air India Flight 182 (Hijacking)
1.4.7 19 June 1985: Frankfurt Airport Bombing (Airport Attack)
1.4.8 21 December 1988: Lockerbie Bombing/PAN AM 103
1.4.9 11 September 2001 Attacks
1.4.10 A Short Reminder
1.4.11 The Conspiracy Theories
1.5 Terror at Sea
1.5.1 Maritime Security: A Large Panel of Threats
1.5.1.1 Illegal Paramilitary Or Illegal Military Activity
1.5.1.2 Terrorism
1.5.1.3 Trafficking
1.5.1.4 Piracy
1.5.2 What Is the Future of Attacks at Sea?
1.6 Terror in Cities – Land Attacks
1.7 The Munich Massacre On 6 September 1972
1.8 The Bologna Central Station Attack
1.9 18 April 1983: US Embassy Bombing, Beirut (Suicide Attack)
1.10 26 February 1993: 1993 World Trade Center Bombing (Bombing)
1.10.1 19 April 1995: Oklahoma City Bombing (Bombing)
1.10.2 11 March 2004: Madrid Train Bombs (Bombing – Attacks On Station)
1.10.3 1 September 2004: Beslan School Siege (Armed Attack)
1.10.4 7 July 2005: London Transport Bombings (Bombing)
1.10.5 22 July 2011: Breivik Shootings Or the 2011 Norway Attacks (Armed Attack)
1.10.6 7 January 2015: Charlie Hebdo Shootings (Armed Attack)
1.10.7 9 January 2015: Hyper Cacher Kosher Deli Siege
1.10.8 13 November 2015: Paris Attacks (Suicide Bombing)
1.10.9 14 July 2016: Nice Attack (Vehicle-Ramming – Public Space)
1.10.10 24 August 2020: Syria Pipeline Attack
1.10.10.1 The End of the Hollywood Type World Attacks
1.11 Recent Attack Trends
1.11.1 Lone-Wolf Attacks
1.12 New Techniques
1.12.1 Drone Attacks
1.12.1.1 2 July 2019: Attack On a Saudi Arabian Airport
1.12.2 Cyberterrorism
Notes
2 Is Our World Under Threat?
2.1 Risk
2.2 Risk and Threat Management
2.3 Managing Threat
2.4 A Threat Getting More and More Elusive
2.5 How Does It Impact Our Work as Security Practitioners?
2.6 What About the Context?
2.7 Too Few Agents and Too Few Actions
2.7.1 Threat-As-Agent: Nature and Type
2.8 The Nature of the Threat
2.8.1 External Or Outside Threat
2.8.2 Internal Or Insider Threat
2.8.3 Colluding Threats
2.9 Design Basis Threat
2.9.1 Attackers – Nature, Number and Type
2.10 A Target-Centric Approach and an Acute Ear
2.11 A Case Study
2.12 Understanding the Threat
2.13 Weapons and Means
2.14 Tactics
2.15 Motivation
2.16 Training and Capabilities
2.16.1 Attractiveness (A)
2.16.1.1 Biringer Et Al.
2.16.1.2 Vellani and the Threat Analysis Group
2.16.1.3 American Petroleum Institute API 780
2.17 Measuring Attractiveness
2.18 Traditional Threat Assessment
2.19 Threat Identification
2.19.1 “Threats From” Or the Nature of the Threat
2.19.2 API 780: Define the Nature and Type of Threat
2.19.3 The Nature of the Threat
2.19.4 Type of Adversary
2.19.5 Adversary’s Intentions
2.19.6 Adversary’s Motivation
2.19.7 Adversary’s Capability
2.20 Threat Evaluation
2.20.1 Biringer Et Al.
2.20.2 TAG Risk Assessment Process (2007: Vellani)
2.21 Threat Evaluation Steps
2.21.1 Identify the Nature of the Adversary
2.21.2 Identify the Type of Adversaries
2.21.3 Identify the Nature of the Potential Attack
2.21.4 Create a List of Possible Modi Operandi
2.21.5 Rank the Threat
2.21.6 Evaluating the Likelihood of Attack
2.21.7 Evaluate Attractiveness
2.22 The CARVER + I Method (Aka CARVERI)
2.23 Threat and the Business of Security Consultancy
2.23.1 The Cultural Aspect of Threats
Notes
3 The Globalization of Threats
3.1 A New Trend in the Nature of Threat
3.2 The Globalization of Threats: From the Global to the Local Threat
3.3 Security and Non-Security Threats
3.4 Global Threats: What Does This Mean?
3.5 Local Threats
3.6 Identifying Potential Adversaries
3.6.1 Becoming the Amateur Analyst
3.7 Terrorist Attack Claims: Reality Or Propaganda Tool? The Lone Wolf Syndrome and the Endorsement of Individual Acts By Global Networks of Terror
3.7.1 Emerging Threats, a New Type of Murderers
3.8 Why Are These Tactics Chosen?
3.9 The Example of Terrorism in the European Union: Facts and Figures
3.10 Figures Difficult to Confirm
3.11 Confirmation of the Lone Wolf Trend
3.12 A Significant Drop in Terrorist Arrests
3.12.1 Increased Use of Simple Weaponry
3.13 Online Radicalization: An Increasing Threat
3.14 The Endogenous Threat
3.15 The Fifth Column: Reality Or Fantasy? How Effective Can It Be? How to Fight It?
Notes
4 The Securitization of Threats
4.1 Now a Bit of Theory…
4.2 The Four Major Actors
4.2.1 Policymakers
4.2.2 Bureaucratic Actors
4.2.3 Technical Actors
4.2.4 The Public
4.3 Conditions of Success of the Securitization Process
4.3.1 The Eight Necessary Components of Securitization
4.3.1.1 A Motive
4.3.1.2 A Securitizing Driver
4.3.1.3 An Existential Threat, Or a Threat That Can Be Credible as an Existential Threat
4.3.1.4 An Event That Will Create the Occasion to Act
4.3.1.5 A Referent Element That Needs to Be Protected
4.3.1.6 An Audience
4.3.1.7 Media With a Vested Interest
4.3.1.8 Capacity to Enforce the Securitization of a Threat
4.4 Securitization and the Security Practitioner
5 The Quest for a Method
5.1 Introducing Reflexive Cultural Realism
5.2 The Reflexive Cultural Realism Approach: A Seven-Step Method
5.2.1 Step 1: Reformulate the Question Asked By the Customer
5.2.2 Step 2. Establish the Nature and Limits of the Questions as Well as the Expectations of the Customer
5.2.2.1 Comprehend What the Corporate Customer Really Wants
5.2.2.2 Placing the Project in a Timeline
5.2.2.3 Placing the Project in a Cultural Environment
5.2.2.4 How Will a Theory-Based Approach Improve On Existing Methods of Analysis?
5.2.3 Step 3. Define Forces, Indicators, Variables and Data Relevant to the Question at Hand
5.2.3.1 From the ‘Global Village’ to the Village: Evaluating Forces at Different Levels
5.2.3.2 Indicators
5.2.3.3 Variables and Relevant Data
5.2.4 Step 4. Establish From One to Three Scenarios
5.2.4.1 The Place of Power in Scenario Planning
5.2.4.2 Create an Indicators List
5.2.5 Step 5. Evaluate the Chances of Each Scenario Occurring (Risk Intelligence)
5.2.5.1 Encouraging and Developing Risk Intelligence
5.2.6 Step 6. Deliver a Report
5.2.7 Step 7. Store the Analysis for Archive and Further Use
Notes
6 Anticipating the Threat: Introduction to Forecasting Principles and Techniques
6.1 What We Really Are Supposed to Bring to the Table
6.2 Limits of Our Analyzes
6.2.1 Analysis and Forecast
6.2.2 Forecasting Principles and Concepts
6.3 Extrapolation, Projection and Forecast
6.4 Forecasting Applied to International Security
6.4.1 About Scenarios
6.5 Inconsistency and Bias
6.6 Disruptive Events and Disruptive Technologies
6.7 So, How Do You Start?
6.8 How to Link Disruptive Events to Disruptive Techniques?
6.9 The Issue of Bias in Forecasting
6.10 Use Different Methods
6.11 The Limits of Forecasting
6.12 Prediction, Context and Purpose
6.13 The Target Centric Approach
6.14 The PSA Toolbox: Principles, Methods and Techniques
6.15 Technique 1: Judgmental Methods
6.16 Technique 2: The Delphi Technique
6.17 Technique 3: Role-Playing
6.18 Technique 4: Game Theory
6.19 Conclusion
Notes
And Now…
References
Index
