The Risk Matrix

ASIS International’s Certified Protection Professional (CPP) certification is highly beneficial for security professionals seeking leadership roles. It has its flaws but, anecdotally, I have seen it mentioned in job ads more often than any other designation. When I passed the requisite exam in early February and promised to offer my thoughts, the reaction from future test-takers was welcoming. So here they are. To paraphrase the Law & Order TV franchise, “this is my story. DUN DUN.”

Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is having a moment. Just a few years ago, presentations on OSINT began with a quote from one of a few different senior intelligence community officials who reportedly said that somewhere between 80-90% of valuable information comes from public sources. Many presentations today start similarly, but OSINT no longer needs the validation of government greats. Films like Searching and Don’t f**ck with Cats have introduced the discipline to a wider audience, organizations such as Trace Labs host popular OSINT competitions for the common good, and the investigators associated with the website Bellingcat are now media fixtures.

Chances are that the novel coronavirus and the resulting disease—COVID-19—has upended your world.

Our baseline level of suspicion about the security of data and communications is very high these days. Are smart devices recording conversations and conveying them to marketers?

With GDP growth on the continent reaching its highest rate since 2012 and long-term prospects equally favorable, Africa holds great promise for investors. But alongside opportunities, foreign enterprises face vast gaps in their knowledge of the business landscape.

From the standpoint of risk analysis, recency bias—that is, an overwhelming focus on events that have happened most recently—is one of the most nefarious psychological blinders.

A cursory review of the latest writing on public sector intelligence analysis reveals a great deal of soul-searching about emerging threats to the profession.

Despite the availability of an experimental vaccine and the recent experience of a major Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is failing to address what is now the world’s second-largest outbreak of the disease.

If there is any broad lesson we have learned over the past decade of global developments, it is the extent to which risks are connected and the shocks that can result if we do not acknowledge their linkages

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, as well as specialized social networks and encrypted messaging apps have come under attack for facilitating violent extremism and serving as violent ideology laboratories

For much of the past decade, Ravi Satkalmi has helped lead the New York City Police Department’s (NYPD) Intelligence Analysis Unit, a team within the NYPD’s Intelligence Bureau that provides critical support on counterterrorism investigations, analyzes foreign and domestic terrorist threats to the city, offers input on policies pertaining to counterterrorism, and liaises with law enforcement and private sector partners.

Recruiting people of varying backgrounds into private sector intelligence is just as important as in the rest of the security industry.

In 2007, Aon’s Global Risk Management Survey identified reputational risk as the top concern for global enterprises. A decade later, in the latest such survey by Aon, “damage to reputation/brand” retained its number one spot among more than 50 other categories of risks.