What’s an executive protection plan? In plain terms, it’s a security plan that guarantees no threats and the client invulnerability.
The ultimate goal of executive protection is to provide a safe and secure environment. It’s not to have a shadowy person observing every step you make or every breath you take. The idea behind EP involves all the protection principles, including determining actual and potential vulnerabilities and careful analysis and preparation. The third pillar, however, is to implement a well-conceived executive protection plan.
With these three guiding points in mind, EP agents will get their job done far quicker and efficiently.
When you see the words guarantee and executive protection close together, it could make you frown. And for a good reason. No one can predict everything ― not even the best EP team.
Yes, you read that right: not even the best EP team.
Still, what an executive protection plan does is minimize the likelihood of something nefarious happening.
Basics of Resilient Executive Protection Plans
A successful plan of this kind employs available resources and conducts proper strategies and tactics. Last but not least, it accounts for emergencies. Nevertheless, a security plan’s goal is not to produce the most rigid and extensive protection scheme. On the contrary, it’s supposed to be sufficiently flexible to allow the client to engage in all activities under the safest circumstances.
In other words, being an operational mobility expert is of massive help in this case.
As with any job, creating an EP plan includes teamwork between the protectors and the client. Additionally, it requires the analytical processing of information, ethical conduct, and understanding of human factors. Having all of this is crucial and not up for discussion.
Differently put, apart from working as an EP specialist, you should also possess social skills. That’s because around 50% of your job is to find stuff out and not shoot at a potential attacker.
If your client isn’t sharing all the information they have, that will cripple you to protect them. This behavior creates information cracks and potential risks for both your principal and their family. But what can you do if your client is reluctant to tell you about their plans?
For one, you can ask their colleagues, staff, and family members. Get the know-how before you establish how to act.
Collect as much information as possible to produce a watertight EP plan.
And remember that you aren’t a bulldog for anyone to push around. Just because your client asks you to get into a fight with someone for no good reason, don’t do it. You have your security plan in place, so don’t deviate from it. Your primary task is to protect the principal and make sure their surroundings are secure.
That’s why it’s of the utmost importance to have an open relationship with your principal and surroundings. The more you know about them, the better your executive protection plan will be.
Why You Need an EP Plan
Ever since one person took up a stick to protect another, the reasons for personal protection remained more or less the same. What has changed is that we have become more sophisticated in how we protect one another. For example, we now use advance tools and gadgets and are seasoned in hand-to-hand combat.
The central postulate of protective services is to defend the principal from all likely dangers by minimizing the risks from the following:
- Intentional injury,
- Unintentional injury,
- Embarrassment,
- Unauthorized release of information, such as the principal’s schedule.
As you can see, you need to prevent all of this from happening, not just ensure your principal’s physical safety. Finally, the answer to the question of when an executive protection plan is redundant is ― never! It is always useful if you work in the industry or even intend to. No client will hire you if you don’t know how to produce a comprehensive EP plan.
Speaking of questions, an executive protection agent and their team should always ask: what if? When the right what-if questions are asked and answered, the outcome is usually a successful and safe trip.
Similarly, there’s the saying that common sense isn’t that common. That might be true more in executive protection than any other field. We say this because EP specialists sometimes forget to ask common-sense questions before embarking on a journey. The biggest enemy of sound EP plans is people becoming wrapped up in standardization, ambiguity, and bureaucracy.
Contrary to that, it would be best if you had flexibility.
Flexible is Better
Having a strict and tight EP plan also comes with downsides. Protecting your principal also means maintaining a relaxed posture to accommodate the good relations among the client, staff, hosts, and public. When you repeatedly emphasize that you are the expert and not your principal, that could backfire terribly.
Moreover, it’s likely to result in minimal cooperation from the people whose collaboration is most decisive.
The chances are you aren’t the first EP agent to protect your client. There probably have been others before you. We say this because a good security plan develops, builds on, and updates plans that other security teams created. No matter how good the plan seems to be, you can always improve it. Just remember Murphy’s Law of anything that can go wrong, will.
Now, if that’s not your weekly boost of motivation, then we don’t know what is.
Jokes aside, there is also a different aspect of devising a security plan to consider. If you are traveling abroad or to a dangerous neighborhood, pay close attention to the local climate. That includes finding out about local issues, planned demonstrations, and political disruption.
Your number one priority in this sense is to delay or cancel potential attacks for as long as possible. Attackers will undoubtedly search for ways to weaken your defenses. Thus, it’s your job to look at your executive protection plan from the standpoint of violators.
That way, you can be overly critical towards it and correct course if needed. And boy, will it be necessary on most days!
Most importantly, a security plan must integrate alarms, cameras, lights, and other actions. It’s vital to look at a plan of this kind holistically, as in including multiple aspects and not only focusing on individual levels.
Producing an excellent executive protection plan is the first and last step in ensuring the safety of everyone. Try it!
