Congratulations! You are a successful security professional in an organization that has a global footprint. You work for a company with an international or multinational method of doing business. Accordingly, in your role of security manager you have just been advised that your company will build a chemical facility in Colombia, and you now have the responsibility and obligation to ensure that your company's people and assets are adequately protected. Whether you have had international security experience or not, you are about to get an education in the ups and downs, the ins and outs, of dealing with people and projects operating outside of the United States of America or wherever you country of origin might be.
You are faced with major opportunities and gigantic challenges. The opportunities include:
- Ensuring adequate protection for your company's key resources, its people and assets
- Establishing your credibility with senior management, your colleagues, and the entire organization
- Demonstrating your strategic value to the organization
The challenges include:
- Ensuring adequate protection for your company's key resources, its people and assets
- Establishing credibility with senior management, your colleagues, and the entire organization
- Demonstrating your strategic value to the organization
Seriously, the way you handle the challenges presented to you not only can ensure that your company is on the best footing with respect to risk, but also can be beneficial or even critical to your success or longevity with the organization. I have been exactly where you might be right now-new to the job, and new to the area of international security. Maybe you have never been to the country or countries you are now going to become very familiar with, or perhaps you have never even been outside of the United States. Maybe you don't even own a passport.
So, what to do? Well, first, take a deep breath and do not freak out. Two months into a new security manager's position, I was advised that we would be sending employees into Iraq to work as part of Restore Iraqi Infrastructure and Restore Iraqi Electricity. Talk about going from 0 to 60 in 2 seconds flat! You can do this! You can build up your international security credentials and confidence at the same time.
You might want to immediately purchase a really good map of the country. Not always an easy thing to do. I would suggest beginning a Google search for maps of your project location. You will want a hard-copy map, but check these out online to see if they have the detail you want and the cities and locations you need. Finding a really good map, especially one with details down to streets, is difficult if not sometimes impossible. I have known U.S. embassies in foreign countries that did not possess city street maps, even for the capitals or major cities where they were located. Sometimes this is due to the host country's reluctance to place such detail at the fingertips of whomever, or just due to the lack of sophistication with city planning and infrastructure. Even if you have a detailed city map, as you will discover, there are often changes that have been made-little things like the street being completely gone and a high-rise hotel or apartment buildings blocking the way, construction under way, and other such concerns.
You will want to locate adjacent countries, which might be a concern if these are undergoing political or ethnic strife. The surrounding countries can be a concern if any type of hostility tends to shift back and forth across borders. You will want to know if the surrounding countries are easy or difficult to enter in case of the need to evacuate to such locations (more about this in later chapters). Armed with a country map, grab some pushpins and tack this to your wall. Locate a city map, as detailed as possible, and hang it up. Now, when people enter your office they will be impressed that you know where your employees are heading. Knowledge of geography, as you may or may not have realized, is not as common as one would think.
Your next task will be to find out as much about the country as you can. You may have to accomplish this in a fairly quick manner. There are several ways to go about this. You can check the CIA World Factbook. This is available online and will provide you with a quick assessment of the country's location, geography, population, government, major imports/exports, political status/tensions, crime, and other pertinent information. You should check with the U.S. Department of State website. You will find crime and safety reports for many countries, along with media reporting of a more current nature. Hopefully, you are already a State Department constituent member of the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC), which will open up more online information and resources. OSAC has many country councils, which are made up of private sector security professionals such as yourself, who are located in these countries and regions. OSAC is open to U.S. corporations only. If you are not a member, apply and join. The benefits of sharing and gathering information among colleagues are invaluable.
Make use of professional organizations, such as the American Society for Industrial Security International (ASIS). One of the first things I do when learning of foreign projects is to use the ASIS member directory, searching by country and even city. Say, for example, my company is planning to open an office in Mumbai, India. I would check out the ASIS directory for India, and I would hopefully find someone who is located in Mumbai or Calcutta. I could contact this person, introduce myself, and begin the task of laying the groundwork for finding out as much as possible.
I have done so on many occasions, locating ASIS members in foreign cities. I have yet to find someone reluctant to discuss the security situation with me or to converse about threats or concerns to foreigners. One will need to consider the cultural sensitivities and avoid generalities. For example, you will not want to begin your conversation with a resident of the Republic of Chad by asking him or her just how dangerous or awful the country might be.
Finally, but of equal importance, go to the public library. You will want to look for travel guides and reports on the country of interest, atlases and National Geographic magazines, as well as political journals and trade magazines (you might discover competitors who are working in the same country or region). I would look for all manner of newspaper and magazine articles that refer to the country and issues that might be of concern. I would look for records of natural disasters that have taken place. If you are fortunate enough, you may work for an organization that has taken the time to implement its own library resources, with employees educated in library science. I have seen such resources in action and I cannot recommend them enough. Not only can they save you time and effort in chasing down articles, books, and magazines, but once you give them the country, the region, and the location, they can comb all of their resources to find more than you ever could.
You will want to ask about things such as road conditions and how companies get from Point A to Point B from a transportation perspective. Will you need four-wheel-drive vehicles? You will need to know the infrastructure and capabilities of road systems. You need to discover all the things your engineers, scientists, academics, and employees will be undertaking in this country.
What is often most important for security managers concerning international organizations is being wired into the decision-making process for international projects, travel, and operations. Being as well informed as possible about international projects or operations, or persons traveling internationally, is half the battle. To some, this might be considered the intelligence required in order for you to make informed judgments and decisions concerning security programs for protection.
How one learns about projects, travel, and operations in foreign locations or volatile areas is a complicated matter. Establishing and maintaining positive relationships with the decision makers and project management personnel is critical. The most advantageous time to gain critical knowledge of overseas operations, travel, and projects is in the planning stage. Once a project is under way, whether it is the construction of a new facility, office, or manufacturing plant, or the travel of employees to countries for meetings or negotiations, it is much more difficult to successfully impact the safety and security of these operations.
One method of becoming forewarned of impending projects, office construction, or employee travel is to have developed good relationships with your various business unit managers. Knowing the risk management personnel, legal department team, human resources, and environmental health and safety employees will be critical to your success. If your company has a crisis management team (if not, it would be a huge feather in your cap to start one!) that has broad representation among business units and corporate functions, their meetings are a great opportunity to determine who is going or working where. Much of the critical planning you will need from a safety and security standpoint can be initiated in such meetings or with this preliminary knowledge.
It is one thing for your employees to travel to a foreign country for meetings, and have these meetings take place only in a hotel. It is a more far-reaching concern if your colleagues will be not only meeting, but also visiting potential business partners, future construction sites, manufacturing locations, or other points. In some cases, merely traveling from the airport to a city or town can be risky. Many criminals prowl the airports and surrounding area and engage in bump-and-rob attacks-where vehicles such as taxis are rear-ended and occupants are robbed when cab drivers stop to investigate.
Key Points
Working in volatile areas necessitates that you equip your personnel and protect your assets from the threats you identify. Let's say you identify that major metropolitan areas in the country you will be visiting are plagued by high levels of street crime, with pickpocketing being the most common occurrence. You would need to provide the traveler, any dependents who might be traveling with him or her, and those expats who might be assigned permanently in-country with this information and some tips for deterring becoming a victim to such criminal acts. Such training might include "street smarts" instruction for not looking the part of a victim: looking up and around and being confident, not displaying expensive jewelry, keeping laptops secured and out of sight rather than dangling from shoulders while strolling around, being aware of your surroundings, and other useful tips.
If your research indicates that the threats come from terrorist acts, such as truck bombings that have targeted Western hotels, one might want to prohibit your employees from using these chains for lodging. You may want to advise travelers that they should attempt to stay on lower floors of the hotels-not the first floor, but under the seventh floor, for example. Many cities that have a robust emergency response capability would be hard-pressed to respond with ladder trucks that could reach any higher. You could also advise travelers to choose rooms located toward the back of the hotel property, away from front entrance drives and roadways.
Locating in these areas can increase the setback and distance from potential for blast sources. Threats of bombings against your offices and facilities might warrant initiating further setbacks at these locations, extending vehicle checkpoints, initiating intense vehicle search techniques, and improving or adding lighting, closed-circuit television, surveillance, and guard tours.
Case Study
As I mentioned from the outset, I was two months into a position when I was brought into a meeting and advised that our government group had signed a contract to conduct work in Iraq as part of the U.S. government reconstruction effort. Notice, I said they had signed the contract, and not that they were thinking of signing a contract and wanted my input from a safety and security standpoint. The contract was a done deal. Signed, sealed, and delivered. Fait accompli. All I had to do was ensure our employees, in this case, engineers, were kept safe and sound in some of the worst locations within Iraq. Oh, yes. The year was 2003, and the security situation in Iraq was dire. The first thing I did? You mean, outside of banging my head against the wall? We were subcontractors on this project; later we would become joint venture partners with another company in Iraq. The primary contractor had the security and safety responsibilities according to the contract, as is usually the case. This did not, however, make me any less responsible for auditing and approving the security measures the primary was implementing on behalf of our employees.
In this particular case, the primary contractor had been working in Iraq for some time. Its security measures had been in place for a few months. Iraq at that time was chaotic at best. The "Green Zone"-a less appropriate name for a location I have yet to find-was going to be our primary location of office space, but we would be venturing out with projects and site visits around the country. The Green Zone was getting peppered daily by rockets and mortars, and the nine-mile stretch of highway from Baghdad International Airport (later called BIAP) would remain for several years the most dangerous stretch of roadway in the world.
Concerning vehicular transport, our project immediately had two choices: take advantage of the protection provided by the United States military and wait for military convoys of troop and supply carriers, armored vehicles and the like, or take chances on our own. Closer inspection revealed that many contractors who took advantage of this "protection" came under frequent attack, just by being part of the convoy while the bad guys attacked the military. Similarly, many contractors decided to merely remain close to the convoys and not actually become embedded with these groups, but were also attacked. No, it quickly became evident that we would require our own means of conveyance, our own armored vehicles and protective forces-"shooters," as the term would be coined. Our employees would wear heavy ballistic jackets and helmets. (Although initially we were not aware of the drawback of not adding the ceramic plates in the ballistic jacket in order to stop 7.62 caliber rounds-an oversight, we quickly corrected).
Static security was an entirely different issue. Due to the continuous overflight of rockets and mortars, with frequent impacts near or inside our perimeters, we constructed a variety of bomb shelters. Some were as simple as inverted concrete culverts under which personnel could take refuge, surrounded by sandbags. Later, due to more frequent incidents, we began to scoop shelters out of the ground, reinforced with concrete, and with steps and lighting leading down to safety. We held unannounced drills designed to create a conditioned response to whistles and other alerts indicating incoming ordnance was imminent or under way. We also gravitated toward ensuring employees wore their ballistic helmets and vests, even when walking from lodging trailers to office trailers, or whenever traveling in the Green Zone-on foot or in vehicles.
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