Surveillance detection is the attempt to covertly determine if surveillance is being conducted, and if so, to collect general information on the surveillance entity – time, location, appearance, actions, and correlations to the target.

Surveillance Mapping is a term we use to describe the mapping out of the area around a given property, as it relates to potential surveillance vantage points, and the information that can be collected on the property from those vantage points.

One of the biggest benefits of understanding hostile planning is that it helps take much of the guesswork out of security solutions. As had been explained in previous articles, Attacks don’t simply come out of nowhere because attackers don’t spring out of thin air.  Hostile actions are predicated on hostile planning, which includes hostile surveillance.

When considering the various strategies against hostile surveillance, one of the most important distinctions to be made, right off the bat, is whether the strategy requires highly trained, covert operatives for its execution, or whether it can be performed by more conventional, overt security officers.

Surveillance, as I’ve previously explained, is a wide, deep and varied field, which in turn means that the strategies against it are no less wide, deep and varied. And though there are endless ways of looking at this field, and endless categories, subcategories and combinations of categories, in order to properly discuss this subject, we… Read More Strategies Against Hostile Surveillance

In the shadowy and oftentimes misunderstood field of criminal activity and terrorism, hostile surveillance is one of the least understood factors. The goal of this article is to very briefly explain a few factors about hostile surveillance, as we search for ways in which conventional security personnel can mitigate its effects.

The hostile planning process is the logical series of phases and steps that take place while planning a hostile attack. The steps that are going to be detailed in this article do not come out of strictly theoretical research, but rather from the study of actual case studies, including interviews with captured members of terrorist… Read More The Hostile Planning Process

Of the various misconceptions surrounding terrorism, a surprisingly common one is the misunderstanding about the political motivations behind terrorism. This might sound surprising because, as many of you know, the political aim of terrorism actually appears in its dictionary definition. And yet, the misunderstanding persists.

Though the subject of terrorism is quite large, for the purposes of physical prevention, there are relatively few aspects that have actual and practical implications for the security professional (as opposed to strictly theoretical ones).Two such aspects are hereby detailed:

Prevention is a chosen action; reaction is a forced one. As had been mentioned in a previous article, we humans are hardwired to look for, and react to, actions. This is not a bad thing in itself – it might just save your life someday. But if we want to dig a bit deeper and… Read More Proactive Decision Making