In July, Dennis White shot and killed his supervisor after being fired for allegedly taking wire cutters to a costly piece of machinery at a beverage company. That wasn’t your guess? Without evaluating the degree of each threat, preventing homicides in the workplace becomes a game of Russian roulette.

Even though homicides are down, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, an overwhelming majority of security and human resource executives believe workplace violence is on the rise. In a 2005 study commissioned by New York-based Risk Control Strategies, 82 percent of 602 respondents said workplace violence has increased in the past two years. Verbal threats, intentional downloading of viruses and product tampering are the new ways in which employees are expressing their frustration and continuing to wreak millions of dollars in damages, according to the results.