Balancing Design and Active Shooter Threats

As enterprise security executives, we are largely trained to focus our security plans toward a Design Basis Threat (DBT) – the most likely or credible threat(s) to a site, weighted by probability and impact of successful attack. Primarily this focus is aimed towards three common categories: Insiders, Outsiders and Outsiders with Connections to Insiders. Among these categories you may evaluate the intent of each group (vandalism, theft, sabotage, etc.), the skill level of each group (unskilled, semi-skilled, highly trained, etc.), and the methods used to achieve the intended goal (hand-tools, cutting tools, explosives, deception, etc.). What is often omitted or overlooked from these threat assessments is an Active Shooter/Violent Intruder/Active Threat.

Though often overlooked, active shooter events should be considered by every enterprise security executive. While hard to predict, the probability of active shooter is a real threat for every enterprise. The rate of occurrence of active shooter events has nearly tripled since 2000 and continues to rise. The common misconception is that active shooter incidents rarely happen outside of schools/campuses. However in an FBI report, A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States between 2000 and 2013, the numbers paint a different picture. Commerce facilities were the targets of active shooter incidents in nearly half of the 160 cases studied. Educational facilities were targets 25 percent of the time, and government facilities were targets 10 percent of the time.