Your organization might be prepared to manage a flood, but are you ready for the ensuing supply chain interruptions? You may have an emergency procedure for active shooters, but what about riots or broader civil unrest?
Fortunately, September is National Preparedness Month – which makes this a good opportunity to take a closer look at your organization’s readiness for physical threats as 2025 approaches. Now is the time for business and government leaders to assess the risk landscape and boost resilience for the coming year.
A Rocky Risk Landscape
Odds are, your organization has recently faced a physical threat, whether you were prepared for it or not. Ninety-nine percent of executives and 100 percent of government leaders surveyed say their organization or agency experienced a physical threat in the last 24 months, according to the 2024 OnSolve Global Risk Impact Report.
Threats aren’t just becoming more common, either. They’re becoming more complex, with unforeseen impacts that can last for days, weeks or even months after the initial event.
For example, a flash flood at West Point, NY, in July 2023 didn’t last long. But the eight inches of heavy rain damaged buildings, washed away roads and destroyed infrastructure at the Academy and surrounding counties, leading to an estimated repair cost of over $100 million.
When one emergency event leads to another, we call this dynamic risk. The cascading damage can cause serious disruption, especially if you’re caught unprepared. In fact, 63 percent of executives and 51 percent of federal leaders say their organization or agency experienced unexpected impacts “most of the time” or “always” as a result of the physical threats they experienced in the past 24 months.
To better manage physical threats and their unanticipated impacts, security and risk leaders must move beyond the traditional risk prevention framework. Instead, organizations and government agencies need to focus on resilience management by taking a proactive approach to threat mitigation built on rapid discovery and recovery.
The Preparedness Gap
Leaders know that danger is rising. Yet our analysis uncovered a preparedness gap when it comes to risk readiness. Here are the top three insights we found in our research:
1. There’s a disconnect between goals and actions. While leaders want to protect their organizations or agencies, the majority aren’t proactively preparing for risks.
More than half of executives (56 percent) and federal leaders (53 percent) say their top priority is preparing for a physical threat or crisis that puts employee safety or operations at risk. Despite this, only 23 percent of executives and six percent of federal leaders say they’re proactive about identifying risks.
2. Awareness doesn’t mean preparedness. Even though leaders are able to identify their top threats, they’re not necessarily ready for them.
Natural disasters are the top physical threat identified by executives for 2024, yet only 45 percent have a mitigation plan in place for this type of threat. Seventy-two percent of state and local leaders say crime is their biggest threat for 2024, but only 63 percent have a mitigation plan prepared.
3. There’s room to improve with technology and training. Critical event management (CEM) technology can help close the preparedness gap, but it’s one of the biggest areas for improvement for organizations and agencies.
Forty-five percent of executives identify inadequate threat monitoring and detection as the biggest barrier to improving the resilience program at their organization. A quarter of federal leaders cite a lack of technology as their biggest obstacle, while 37 percent of state and local leaders say limited upskilling or training creates the biggest challenge in their agency’s planning, response and recovery program.
Whether you’re a security professional at a private organization or a risk management leader in a government agency, National Preparedness Month is a reminder to make sure your preparations align with your biggest threats – and give your people the resources they need to carry out the right response in any situation.
Boosting Preparedness with Critical Event Management Technology
One way to become more proactive toward the dynamic risks posed by physical threats is to adopt a unified platform for critical event management. The right CEM technology offers advanced solutions with the capabilities you need to proactively prepare for and respond to risks, including:
- In-depth data analytics and insights: Get a 360-degree view of past, current and future risk with historical risk data. Generate targeted reports for specific regions and timeframes using geographical analysis of past critical events and identify high-risk locations to improve preparedness.
- Real-time threat updates and alerts: Improve business continuity using AI-powered risk intelligence to aggregate and filter complex data about incoming threats. Act quickly and decisively with timely and accurate alerts about physical threats to your people and property, reducing impacts to your operations.
- Multimodal, targeted mass notifications: Make sure everyone stays informed with targeted, time-sensitive communications. Get the right messages to the right people at the right time with pre-written templates and multi-language options. Multiple communications channels, including phone, email and SMS means nobody misses an alert.
- A user-friendly, responsive interface: Respond rapidly and collaborate with a mobile-first platform for incident management. Response teams can update and share information in real time as events unfold, allowing them to work together and adapt their strategies as the situation evolves.
A strong CEM partner doesn’t just provide your organization or agency with the technology to keep you safe. They also help you hone your risk preparedness and response with access to professional risk experts, pairing human expertise with AI-powered risk intelligence to prepare you for any threats you might face.
It's never too early to start preparing for the next threat to your organization or agency – and it’s never too late to develop a comprehensive critical event management plan. Take advantage of this National Preparedness Month to become more resilient and responsive to risk.
Become More Proactive with the Preparedness Resource Center
Whether you’re just starting out on your risk preparedness journey or are a veteran security professional, it always helps to have the right information at your fingertips. Use these resources to strengthen your readiness and response to threats.
- This National Preparedness Month, get information and guidance from FEMA on how to prepare for various types of disasters at National Preparedness Month.
- Keep your people and operations safe from the elements with our Severe Weather Preparedness Kits:
