The most common excuse from leadership after their organization experiences an incident or tragedy is: “We failed to Connect the Dots.”
The most common finding in hundreds of post-event reports after incidents and tragedies including Columbine, 9-11 Commission, Penn State, Sandy Hook, Fort Hood, Paris, San Bernardino, Orlando and others was: “They failed to Connect the Dots.”
Of course the multi-million-dollar question (based on hundreds of multi-million-dollar lawsuits and tragedy responses), is why are organizations “failing to connect the dots”??
The short list of answers are:
- Failing to Collect the Dots – you cannot connect the dots when you don’t have dots to connect
- Failing to Assess the Dots – you cannot assess what you don’t have and don’t know about
- Failing to establish and train a functioning Multi-Disciplinary Threat Assessment Team (MTAT)
- Failing to establish and train a functioning Community-based Threat Assessment Team (CTAT)
- Failing to ensure and measure Ongoing Awareness at the Individual-level (Threat Assessment Team members) understanding of roles, obligations, regulations, standards, “duty of care”, etc.
- Failing to ensure and measure Ongoing Awareness at the Individual-level (employees, third-party service providers, students, family, etc.) for “duty to warn” in recognizing and reporting concerning behaviors, suspicious activities, changing threats, and numerous other indicators
- Failing to establish a web-based, easy to access, secure, confidential and/or truly anonymous, incident reporting option for anyone to access at any time to report indicators they observe, hear about or see on Social Media (including ability to upload screenshots, videos, etc.)
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Failing to equip your organization, your MTAT, your CTAT and your community with the right tools so everyone can do their part to get the right information to the right people in the right places at the right times to effectively Collect, Assess and Connect the Dots
If you’re a skimmer…
Jump to Regulatory Obligations & Mandates
Jump to Conventional Security Solutions & Controls
Regulatory Obligations & Mandates
The failures listed above are dangerous to your organization and your people… but just in case these common failures are not enough to motivate you to seek out Awareity’s “Collecting, Assessing and Connecting the Dots Platform”…
Perhaps regulatory obligations and mandates to “prevent incidents” will convince you to take immediate actions to implements Awareity’s “Collecting, Assessing and Connecting the Dots Platform”:
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American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Workplace Violence (WVPI)
- OSHA
- FERPA/HIPAA
- State & Local Laws
- And others…
Conventional Security Solutions & Controls
And in case regulatory obligations are not enough…
You and your stakeholders will want to take note of overwhelming evidence-based data, hundreds of lessons learned, and costly consequences from previous incidents, lawsuits and tragedies to validate Awareity’s “Collecting, Assessing and Connecting the Dots Platform”:
Click here to see validations of “Conventional Security Solutions Failing to Connect the Dots”:
Conventional Security solutions are designed to “React” to a threat already at your front door, the alarms go off when the threat is already there, the locks hopefully work when the threat is already there, the access control hopefully works when the threat is already there, hopefully the security guards are in the right place when the threat is already there and the cameras record the forensics when the threat is already there. Collecting, Assessing and Connecting the Dots days, weeks, months and years before the threat arrives at your front door is “PREVENTING”.
Click here to see validations of “Conventional Controls Failing to Connect the Dots”:
Conventional Controls are “guidelines, directions, and recipes” for people in your organization, however just having the “directions” does not mean you can get where you are wanting to go and just having the “recipe” does not prevent you from starving. The key to “Controls” is to equipping all appropriate personnel with the right tools so they can convert the “guidelines, directions, and recipes” into the results you really want.
Pre-Incident Data from Post-Incident Reports
Click here to see validations of “Pre-Incident Indicators Prove Prevention Was Possible”:
Hundreds of post-event reports have exposed over and over again “pre-incident indicators” existed, but because the organization or community did not have a central, secure platform to Collect, Assess and Connect the Dots… the “pre-incident indicators” were scattered across multiple departments, multiple silo systems, multiple individuals, multiple Social Media sites and multiple resources…
Legal & Audit Ready Documentation
And last but definitely not least, are you REALLY confident the silo systems, disconnected departments, scattered emails, paper-based files and spreadsheets will provide you with the Legal Ready and Audit Ready Documentation your organization needs if and when lawsuits, federal investigations, accreditations, internal audits and media scrutiny come knocking?
Click here to see a matrix of how ANSI, FERPA and the Virginia State Law each mandate a central, secure “Collecting, Assessing and Connecting the Dots” platform.
You should know this… the American National Standards Institution (ANSI) released the Workplace Violence Prevention and Intervention standard in 2011 – 5 years ago – yet most organizations have NOT implemented the guidelines. In fact, most organizational leaders I speak with say they haven’t even heard of this important standard. The ANSI WVPI standard describes LOTS of DOTS that need to be connected when it comes to multiple types of violence impacting multiple workplace environments, the complex and multi-dimensional nature of workplace violence, a multi-disciplinary approach, multiple stakeholders, multiple departments, multiple skills, multiple resources and more. The ANSI WVPI has emerged as a “gold standard” for organizations to follow for intervening and preventing violence of all types.
It is important to know (especially if you don’t know), ANSI WVPI, FERPA and Virginia’s State Law are all in agreement when it comes to having a CENTRALIZED platform that is separate from employee records systems and student records systems and provides secure and strict “need to know” access for your Multi-Disciplinary Threat Assessment Team members or Community-wide Threat Assessment Team members to access as needed to effectively and efficiently CONNECT the DOTS.