For decades, the Security Driver’s role and responsibilities in the overall protection paradigm has been thoughtfully discussed, vigorously debated, and even aggressively argued, among protection practitioners and leaders on numerous occasions. And yet, today, the profession seems no closer to reaching a consensus on this critical aspect of providing protective services than it was decades ago when the conversation began.

Currently, the profession seems to be loosely divided into two thought groups. Or, at the very least, these two factions tend to dominate the conversation whenever it rises to the surface yet again. There are those who subscribe to the thought that the Solo Practitioner approach (i.e. one person assigned to the day-to-day protection responsibilities to include, driving, pre-planning and coordination, advance work, emergency medical response, etc.) is, from a cost and resource allocation perspective, an effective and efficient model for protecting many at-risk individuals. The opposing groups thought is that “drivers drive”, period, end of story; and that any protection-related responsibilities – except for maybe route planning- maybe – are the domain of the traditional protection practitioner. Yet, one voice most often not included in those conversations are those whose opinion is paramount, that of the protectee or Principal.

At various points throughout this thought-provoking, engaging conversation, we will compare and contrast these predominate schools of thought regarding the role and responsibilities of the security driver, drill down into the positive and negative attributes of each of them, seek to interject the reality of the Principal’s perspective into the discussion, and explore whether or not a risk-based, threat driven, “middle ground” might actually exist…one which may get us that much closer to putting this well worn debate to rest, once and for all.