COOP for Executive Protection: The Continuity of Operations Framework Practitioners Are Missing (2026) 

 By Nic Moretto, SAS-AP® | Founder & CEO, TESS GLOBAL |  

Tactful Elite Security Solutions | Merritt Island, Florida 

The Schedule That Isn’t a Schedule 

Consider two viewing points for the same launch. One is a ticketed platform inside Kennedy Space Center — credentialed access, a known perimeter, a defined egress route. The other is a private rental, booked for the weekend specifically to watch it. It has no venue survey on file, no vetted property manager, no advance work beyond a listing page and a set of photos. 

Now consider that the launch itself — the single event both parties came for — can scrub twice in the same afternoon, with no fixed replacement time. 

The scenario above is illustrative only. It does not describe an actual assignment or client, and no commercial launch provider is referenced or implied. 

The protective plan built around a schedule that no longer exists is not a hypothetical EP planning problem. It is, by definition, a continuity event. Executive protection, as an industry, treats a delayed schedule as an inconvenience to be managed. The federal government treats it as something with its own doctrine, its own planning framework, and its own name: Continuity of Operations, or COOP. 

Even ASIS International’s newly released Executive Protection Standard — the first standard of its kind for the profession — does not cite COOP, Presidential Policy Directive 40, or federal continuity doctrine by name. That gap is the starting point, not a criticism of the standard’s EP scope. 

This is not a new posture for this publication’s coverage of protective program development. The Illusion of Protection argued that security program development fails long before the threat arrives — not from missing tactics, but from missing intelligence infrastructure. Continuity doctrine is the next layer of that same argument: an intelligence-led security program doesn’t just identify what to protect against. It plans for what happens when the plan itself is disrupted. 

In Brief 

This article introduces Continuity of Operations (COOP) — the federal doctrine governing how organizations sustain essential functions through disruption — and develops a direct application of that doctrine to executive protection and intelligence-led security program development. It introduces the COOP-EP Bridge, a direct mapping of federal continuity requirements onto protective operations, and grounds the doctrine in a real operating environment: Florida’s Space Coast, where we operate since 2014, headquartered minutes from Kennedy Space Center. 

Nothing in this article constitutes legal or regulatory compliance advice. Continuity planning obligations vary by organization, contract, and jurisdiction; consult counsel and a qualified continuity practitioner before building a program around any framework described here. 

Key Terms 

What Is COOP? The Federal Continuity of Operations Framework, Explained (2026) 

Continuity of Operations is a federal initiative, not a private-sector best practice that happened to get formalized. Its authority traces to Presidential Policy Directive 40 (PPD-40), signed in 2016, which establishes continuity capability as national policy. 

PPD-40 organizes that policy into three related but distinct efforts. Continuity of Operations (COOP) is the capability of an individual organization to sustain its own essential functions. Continuity of Government (COG) is the broader preservation of governmental structure. Enduring Constitutional Government (ECG) is the coordinated effort to preserve the constitutional framework itself. For this piece, COOP is the operative layer — the one closest to how an individual organization, agency, or protective program actually plans and executes. 

PPD-40 itself is not published for public dissemination. What follows is drawn from the public documents that implement it — the standard way this doctrine is actually cited and taught.

The eight National Essential Functions (NEFs) sit at the center of the federal framework. These are the functions the President and federal departments must be able to perform to lead and sustain the nation during a catastrophic event. Individual agencies translate these into their own Primary Mission Essential Functions (PMEFs) — the specific functions that an agency cannot allow to lapse, regardless of what disrupts normal operations. 

The standing implementing directive is Federal Continuity Directive 1 (FCD-1), issued January 17, 2017. It establishes the framework, requirements, and continuity plan elements federal departments and agencies must build. 

Beginning in December 2023, FEMA’s Office of National Continuity Programs began issuing a modular set of continuity directives that build on this foundation: a Continuity Planning Framework (December 2023), followed by a Continuity Program Management Requirements directive and an Essential Functions Risk Identification and Management directive (both August 2024). FCD-1 remains the most-cited source for the required elements of a continuity plan; the 2023–2024 modular directives are the current planning and program-management layer FEMA now presents to federal executive branch agencies. Citing the current layer of this framework matters — a meaningful share of continuity literature still cites the pre-PPD-40 framework (NSPD-51/HSPD-20, 2007) without noting it has been superseded. 

The doctrine’s evolution, at a glance: 

For organizations outside the federal executive branch — private-sector agencies, state and local jurisdictions, tribal governments — FEMA publishes a parallel document: the Continuity Guidance Circular (CGC), written specifically for non-federal entities including private-sector organizations. FEMA originally issued the CGC in February 2018 and updated it in August 2024 to fold in the Four Planning Factors described below. That update is specific to the CGC itself — it is a separate document from the 2023–2024 modular federal executive branch directives referenced above, which apply to federal agencies rather than non-federal and private-sector entities, so readers shouldn’t conflate the two. 

Florida adds its own layer on top of the federal framework. Florida Statute §252.365 requires the head of each state executive department — along with water management districts and related state entities — to maintain a disaster-preparedness plan ensuring continuity of essential state functions, administered through the Florida Division of Emergency Management. A Florida-licensed security organization operates inside a state that has its own statutory continuity requirement for government agencies, on top of the federal framework its private-sector clients may separately reference through the CGC. 

This isn’t abstract for our company, headquartered on Merritt Island: the company is developing COOP-informed continuity requirements as part of its own service capabilities and has begun training its workforce against FEMA’s own IS-1300.a curriculum, the foundational course covered in the sidebar below. 

How COOP Integrates With Security SOP and Doctrine (2026) 

A security operation already thinks in phases, even without continuity terminology. Pre-planning, activation, sustained operations, stand-down — this is the basic shape of nearly every protective or event-security plan ever written. FEMA’s continuity doctrine does not introduce a new way of thinking. It offers a formalized structure for the same instinct, built to survive the moment a plan meets a disruption it wasn’t written for. 

The federal framework organizes this into the Four Phases of Continuity: 

• • Readiness and Preparedness — developing and revising plans, establishing succession orders and delegations of authority, training and exercising the plan, managing risk before anything happens 

• • Activation — executing the decision to invoke continuity procedures 

• • Continuity Operations — performing essential functions, accounting for personnel, establishing alternate communications, preparing for the return to normal operations 

• • Reconstitution — the actual resumption of normal operations once the disruption has passed 

Mapped against a security SOP, this is not an unfamiliar structure. It is the same logic that governs a protective detail’s own planning cycle, formalized with federal precision and applied to an organization’s essential functions rather than a single event. 

Underneath the four phases sits a second structural layer: the Four Planning Factors, introduced in FEMA’s Continuity Planning Framework — Staff and Organization, Equipment and Systems, Information and Data, and Sites. These factors exist to diversify and distribute what an organization needs to keep functioning, so no single point of failure — one person, one system, one location — can take down an essential function entirely. 

This is precisely where COOP earns a place inside existing security doctrine rather than sitting beside it as an unrelated federal concept. A protective operation that depends on one communications platform, one vehicle, or one person’s presence to function is not resilient. It is simply undisrupted so far. This is also where COOP overlaps directly with intelligence-led security program development: both disciplines start from the same premise — that a security posture built on assumption rather than documented planning is not a program; it is a habit that hasn’t failed yet. 

For an organization operating outside the federal executive branch, this structure is not academic. FEMA’s Continuity Guidance Circular exists precisely to translate the Four Phases and Four Planning Factors into a framework usable by non-federal entities. 

The COOP-EP Bridge: Applying Continuity Doctrine to Executive Protection (2026) 

Mainstream EP doctrine has not generally formalized these continuity requirements in this way. FCD-1 lists the required elements of a federal continuity plan: delineation of essential functions, succession to office and delegations of authority, safekeeping of and access to essential records, continuity locations, continuity communications, human resources planning, devolution of essential functions, reconstitution, and program validation through testing, training, and exercise. 

Read as a checklist for a federal agency, this list is abstract. Read against a protective detail, it is a near-complete description of the gaps that surface the first time a real operation runs into a disruption nobody planned for. What follows is the COOP-EP Bridge: five federal continuity requirements, mapped directly onto protective operations. Three of FCD-1’s remaining elements — delineation of essential functions, essential records, and reconstitution — aren’t dropped; they sit inside the four planning factors and the four phases of continuity described elsewhere in this article rather than standing as separate Bridge elements of their own. 

1. Succession of protective authority. A federal continuity plan requires clear succession to office and delegation of authority — who acts, in what order, if the person normally in charge cannot. A protective detail has an equivalent gap that rarely gets written down with the same rigor: who has decision authority if the detail lead is unreachable, incapacitated, or on the wrong side of a perimeter when a decision has to be made in seconds. Verbal chain-of-command understanding is not a documented succession order, and the difference only becomes visible at the moment it’s tested.

2. Continuity locations and alternate command posts. FCD-1 requires identification of alternate continuity locations so an organization is not dependent on a single facility. A protective detail’s equivalent is the alternate command post — the fallback staging area, the secondary rally point, the location the team defaults to if the primary command location is compromised. Advance work routinely identifies primary locations in detail; the alternate is too often assumed rather than planned and rehearsed.

3. Continuity communications. This is the most direct crossover. Federal continuity doctrine requires organizations to plan for the loss of primary communications and to have tested alternate means ready to activate without delay. Most protective operations carry a single primary communications platform and treat a backup as a spare radio in a bag — not a tested, rehearsed fallback with its own protocol for who initiates it. “We have a backup radio” and “we have a continuity communications plan” are not the same claim. This is not unfamiliar ground for readers of Building the Detail — Stage 6, “The Last Check,” which already establishes comms verification and named contingency owners as part of a properly assembled detail. COOP doctrine gives that instinct a formal name and a tested structure to build against.

4. Human resources planning and devolution. For a federal agency, this means ensuring essential personnel functions continue even if key staff are unavailable. For a protective detail, this is the honest question of what happens to coverage if a team member is removed mid-assignment — through injury, an unrelated emergency, or attrition during an extended assignment — and whether the remaining team has a rehearsed answer rather than an improvised one.

5. Testing, training, and exercise. FCD-1 does not treat a continuity plan as complete once written; the plan is only as good as the organization’s demonstrated ability to execute it under exercise conditions. This is where the gap between written contingency planning and demonstrated continuity capability becomes especially visible. A written contingency section in an advance-work package is not the same as a team that has rehearsed activating it.

None of this requires a protective program to adopt federal terminology wholesale. It requires recognizing that the operational instinct already exists — every competent detail has some version of a backup plan — and that the COOP-EP Bridge offers a tested, formalized structure for turning that instinct into something documented, rehearsed, and auditable. This is, at its core, what separates a mature, intelligence-led security program from a collection of good habits: the difference is not effort; it’s documentation. 

How NASA and Space Force Implement Continuity Near KSC (2026) 

We operate inside an environment where federal continuity doctrine does not stay confined to policy documents — it becomes visible in how the environment surrounding Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station functions day to day. Range operations plan for scrubs and holds as routine. Multi-agency coordination runs continuously between NASA, Space Force, the FAA, and commercial launch providers. The operating posture assumes disruption rather than treating it as exceptional. 

NASA operates under its own current continuity directive — NPD 1040.4C, NASA Continuity of Operations, effective March 11, 2024 through March 11, 2031, owned by NASA’s Office of Protective Services — which governs Kennedy Space Center directly. The Space Force units managing the adjacent range operate under DoD Instruction 3020.26, DoD Continuity Policy (reissued June 2024), which implements PPD-40 for every DoD component, Space Force included. Two separate federal agencies, operating the same corridor, both bound by their own named continuity directives. 

A real, recent example: on May 28, 2026, a commercial launch vehicle experienced an anomaly during a hot-fire test at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Less than twelve hours later, Space Launch Delta 45 supported a separate provider’s launch from the same range. That sequence is a working demonstration of continuity posture in practice, not a policy abstraction. In its own public statement, Space Launch Delta 45 confirmed the Eastern Range “remains fully mission capable for National Security Space Launch and continues to support operations at all other launch complexes” — functionally, a continuity statement, whether or not the organization making it uses COOP terminology. 

Our headquarters is on Merritt Island, in direct proximity to Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, in the same corridor as several of the nation’s leading aerospace and launch organizations. That corridor is publicly documented by NASA itself: the agency’s Artemis Partners page names the prime industry contractors building next-generation launch and lunar systems from this region, including SpaceX and Northrop Grumman, with L3Harris’ propulsion subsidiary, Aerojet Rocketdyne, among the supporting industrial base. 

FEMA’s Continuity Guidance Circular exists specifically to extend continuity doctrine to non-federal entities operating alongside federal programs. Operating in the immediate footprint of a launch range is not, on its own, a claim to expertise — but it does mean this doctrine isn’t theoretical from where I sit. It’s the framework the neighborhood already runs on, named or not. 

Any protective or security program operating in this corridor benefits from fluency in this doctrine — not because continuity awareness is a differentiator to sell, but because a launch schedule that can dissolve without notice is simply a fact of operating here. Treating it as background noise is a planning gap, regardless of who’s doing the planning.

COOP and the Launch Window: A Worked Example 

Return to the opening scenario: a ticketed platform inside Kennedy Space Center against a private rental booked to watch a launch that can scrub without a fixed replacement time. With the doctrine established, the contrast reads differently than it did at the outset. 

The ticketed venue already operates inside something close to a continuity posture, whether or not anyone on-site uses that language. Credentialed access, a known perimeter, a defined egress route — these exist because the venue was built to function inside an environment that routinely disrupts its own schedule. 

The private rental has none of this by default. It has a listing page, a set of photos, and an assumption that the property will behave the way it appeared to online. There is no continuity location identified in case the property proves unsuitable on arrival. There is no continuity communications plan beyond whatever device the traveling party happened to bring. There is no succession of authority if the person who booked the property is also the person responsible for the decision to leave early. 

Applying the Four Planning Factors to this scenario is not an academic exercise: 

None of this requires treating a weekend rental like a federal facility. It requires recognizing that the same planning discipline keeping a launch range operating through a scrub is directly transferable to advance work for an unvetted, one-off site. The gap between a controlled venue and an unvetted one is not really about personnel or physical assets — it is about which side of that gap has already absorbed the discipline this article describes, and which side is depending on the schedule holding. 

The schedule will not always hold. That is the entire premise of continuity doctrine: plan as though it won’t, so that when it doesn’t, the plan is what changes — not the mission. 

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 

Is COOP the same thing as an emergency action plan? 

No. An emergency action plan addresses the immediate response to a specific incident — what a team does in the first minutes of a fire, an active threat, or a medical emergency. COOP addresses something broader and longer: how an organization continues performing essential functions through a sustained disruption, regardless of cause. A mature continuity posture assumes the emergency action plan will be executed and asks the next question — what happens after, and for how long. 

Does COOP apply to private security agencies, or only federal agencies? 

PPD-40 and its implementing directives govern federal executive branch agencies specifically. Private-sector organizations are not bound by PPD-40 directly. FEMA’s Continuity Guidance Circular addresses this gap, published specifically for non-federal entities — state, local, and tribal governments, and private-sector organizations. A private security agency operating near a federal facility is not required to adopt PPD-40, but the CGC gives it a direct, FEMA-authored path to build a comparable posture. 

How does COOP change advance work for an event with an unpredictable schedule? 

It reframes “prepared.” Standard advance work typically plans for a fixed schedule with contingencies for security threats. COOP-informed advance work plans for the schedule itself failing — treating a scrub, a hold, or an indefinite delay as a disruption requiring its own continuity response. In practice: identifying alternate locations, testing communications fallbacks, and establishing succession of decision authority before the event, not improvising them if the schedule collapses. 

What’s the difference between COOP and business continuity planning? 

Both keep essential functions running through disruption, but they come from different origins and apply to different organizations. COOP is specifically federal government doctrine, rooted in PPD-40 and its implementing directives. Business continuity planning is the broader private-sector discipline, often built around standards like NFPA 1600. FEMA’s Continuity Guidance Circular exists precisely to translate federal continuity principles into a form usable by organizations operating under business continuity terminology. 

Where can EP professionals start learning COOP doctrine? 

FEMA’s Continuity Excellence Series offers free, self-paced training through the Emergency Management Institute — see the sidebar below. The best starting point for an EP professional new to COOP is IS-1300.a, Introduction to Continuity — a single foundational course that establishes the vocabulary the rest of the Series builds on. For a faster orientation without formal coursework, FEMA’s Continuity Guidance Circular is written specifically for non-federal audiences and is the most directly applicable public document for a private security organization to start with. 

Outside the federal training track, two established private-sector bodies certify continuity practitioners directly: DRI International (founded 1988, the field’s oldest continuity-certifying body, with credentials including the Certified Business Continuity Professional designation) and the International Association of Emergency Managers, which offers the Certified Emergency Manager (CEM) credential. Both sit alongside FEMA’s free coursework as recognized paths into the discipline. 

What does COOP mean for a private executive protection firm specifically? 

It means treating a protective plan’s dependencies — communications, command authority, staging locations — the same way a federal agency treats its essential functions: as things that must survive disruption, not just things that must exist. A private EP firm is not bound by PPD-40, but FEMA’s Continuity Guidance Circular gives it a direct, public path to build a comparable posture, and the COOP-EP Bridge outlined in this article is one way to apply that posture specifically to protective operations rather than general business continuity. 

SIDEBAR: FEMA’s Continuity Excellence Series — Free Self-Paced Training 

All Independent Study (IS) courses are free through FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute. Current course requirements: fema.gov/emergency-managers/national-preparedness/continuity/excellence-series 

Level I — Professional Continuity Practitioner fema.gov/…/excellence-series/level-1 

Level II — Master Continuity Practitioner (requires Level I first) fema.gov/…/excellence-series/level-2 

I completed IS-1300.a, Introduction to Continuity, in September 2026, and am continuing through the remainder of Level I. 

SOURCES & FURTHER READING 

• PPD-40 background and FCD-1 — FEMA, Federal Continuity Directive 1 (Jan. 17, 2017) 

• FEMA Continuity Planning Framework (Dec. 2023) 

• Essential Functions Risk Identification and Management (Aug. 2024) 

• FEMA Continuity Guidance Circular (originally Feb. 2018, updated Aug. 2024), for non-federal and private-sector entities 

• NASA NODIS: NPD 1040.4C, NASA Continuity of Operations (effective March 11, 2024; expires March 11, 2031) 

• Florida Statute §252.365, state continuity-of-operations requirement 

• DoD Instruction 3020.26, DoD Continuity Policy (reissued June 4, 2024) 

• ASIS International Executive Protection Standard announcement (Sept. 23, 2025) 

• Space Launch Delta 45 public statement confirming Eastern Range mission capability (May 2026) 

• NASA Artemis Partners — industry prime contractors operating in the region 

• NFPA 1600, Standard on Continuity, Emergency, and Crisis Management 

• DRI International — Certified Business Continuity Professional 

• IAEM — Certified Emergency Manager (CEM) 

• FEMA Continuity Excellence Series — free, self-paced training 

Last reviewed: September 2026. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Nic Moretto, SAS-AP® | Founder & CEO, TESS GLOBAL | Tactful Elite Security Solutions | Merritt Island, Florida 

Nic Moretto, SAS-AP® is the Founder & CEO of TESS GLOBAL | Tactful Elite Security Solutions, a BBB A+ Accredited, Florida-licensed security agency (License B-1500005) headquartered on Florida’s Space Coast, operating since 2014 and recognized as a Top 3 Space Coast Security Guard Service in both 2025 and 2026. TESS Global specializes in Intelligence-Led Security, Security Program Development, and COOP Security Support for high-consequence environments. 

With over twenty-two years of experience across executive protection, armed security, and security program development, Nic holds multiple Florida state licenses, including Class B, C, D, DI, and G, and carries the Situational Awareness Advanced Practitioner (SAS-AP®) designation through the Arcuri Group. He is currently completing FEMA’s Continuity Excellence Series, Level I. TESS Global’s Merritt Island headquarters operates in direct proximity to Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, and the company’s federal-adjacent work includes a 2019 engagement providing armed security and access control at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Miami regional office, in support of a federal contractor operating under a GSA Schedule contract. 

A monthly contributing author to EP Wired and an active voice in operational preparedness and modern security program development, Nic is the author of Situational Awareness at Scale (EP Wired, May 2026), Advanced Force Multipliers (EP Wired, June 2026), and Building the Detail (EP Wired, September 2026). 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nic-moretto-sas-ap