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To be protected from everything is impossible, useless, labor-consuming and expensive.  It is necessary to correctly determine security measures so that, on the one hand, they would provide reliable protection of life and property, and on the other - would not burden your way of life or established business procedures excessively. To define the necessary level of protection, one should carry out a threat assessment.

As a rule, influential and well-known people sooner or later begin to assume that they can become an assault target. However, low-profile people can feel the threat and see vulnerable points of their environment and business as well.

Threat evaluation process consists of two parts: 1) collecting information via constant observation and fixation of changes in the environment; 2) determining on the basis of available (fractional, as a rule) information existing risks and their classification by two groups - the ones which can be avoided and the ones which cannot (the last ones should be subject to detailed analysis). Only then necessary measures are worked out to reduce the threat and its consequences to a minimum. If you employ security personnel, it is their business, but you should inform them about all your suspicions and problems concerning your safety. Cases, when definite criminals or criminal groups are known to your security guards are quite rare. Usually the nature of threat is determined, on the basis of features, typical for all potential assaulters.

Threat signs

All criminals can be divided into three groups.  The first group includes those, who commit crimes only under most favorable and safe conditions. They are thieves, hooligans and robbers, ready to take everything, that lies badly, and assault the weak. This is the least dangerous group for security guards. The second group includes professional criminals of different skills, who accomplish crimes on their initiative for their own benefits. Criminals, who fill special orders for causing damage to definite victims constitute the third group. They are the most dangerous and can mix with the victim"s environment or have an access to the guarded site.

Any crime committed by criminals of the last two categories can be divided into three stages: preparatory, managerial and operational (execution of criminal plan).

Preparatory stage. At this stage criminals collect reconnaissance data on the target both by direct and indirect methods. Depending on the thoroughness of preparation, this stage can last for several months. The most thorough preparatory work is the way of large criminal groups. Dilettantes can do without it. Reduced preparation, on the one hand, provide a surprise effect to the criminal action, but on the other - decreases the probability of success and chance to escape.

The following features can indicate that criminals are collecting data on a possible target:

• Strangers begin to show excessive interest for the company, home residence, daily routine of a would-be victim or family members.
• Office, apartment or country house are kept under observation and company"s top managers, leading experts, family members or the victim himself are shadowed. Bear in mind that observation can be carried out by ordinary people, who are not liable to suspicion, for example, a woman with a child. It can be performed from porches, garrets, apartments, cafes, shops, vehicles which are parked nearby for a long time, etc.
• Cleaning, sanitary workers or other repairmen, which were not called, come and start working.
• Suspicious behavior of people, who have been carrying out repair, geodetic or other work near the home residence or workplace of the possible victim, is detected.
• Mobile shops appear near the victim"s office or home.
• Unknown people take photos of buildings and premises of the victim or his employees (family members).
• Adjacent apartments and houses change their owners.
• False telephone calls. With their help malefactors try to find out if their victim is in the house, or the time of his arrival/departure.
• Attempts to carry out non-authorized interrogations, interviews, sociological researches. Presence of those, pretending to be correspondents of radio, TV, or print media.
• Attempts to obtain from different authorities storey-by-storey plans and other technical documents of the building.
• Victim"s office or home is visited by people with strange requests and proposals, or who do not correspond to those, they try to pass for.
• Attempts to penetrate the guarded territory without permission.
• Criminal group members visit the company office under the guise of policemen, sanitary and fire inspectors, etc. allegedly on official duty, or try to penetrate the premises without showing identification cards.
• Unfamiliar people try to make acquaintance with company employees, making inquiries about corporate affairs and their colleagues.
• People with doubtful background attempt to find a job in the company.
• Listening of telephone calls is detected.
• Family members are observed and/or shadowed by strangers.
• Loss of spare keys or detected attempts to make key copies.

Managerial stage. It is characterized by transition from the relatively passive methods of data collection to more active measures of the victim "treatment", revealing the principles of alarm system work as well as creation of conditions for criminal plan realization. At this stage criminals make a sort of rehearsal, for example, trail the victim"s car, visit the same places he does. They also check the skill of his security guards: their reaction to breaking of glass, knocking at the door, etc. It is exactly at this stage one has the best chance to detect criminal preparation.

Characteristic features of the second stage are:

• Detection of hiding places at the site or nearby. Delivery of weapons and/or auxiliary means to these hiding-places.
• Detection of penetration preparations: a rope attached to the roof, a cask put against the fence, a stepladder hidden in the bushes, a broken door of the rear entrance, unbent rods, pulled out boards, bricks hollowed out of the wall, breach in the fence, masked places of possible penetration, etc.
• Damaging of employees" vehicles.
• Detection of the substances, that put dogs off the tracks.
• Attempts to hand over or leave an unchecked object.
• Threats directed against a potential victim.
• Frequent phone calls of distracting nature ("wrong phone number").
• Detention of strangers at the guarded site or attempts to penetrate it.
• Testing the security personnel reaction against security regime violations - breaking of windows, throwing of objects over the fence, making fire near the site, cutting off electrical light or telephone.
• False calls of security guards and their attraction away from the duty.
• "False" alarm system signaling, which may cause desire to switch it off.
• Alarm system damage.
• Strangers fighting near by (with the purpose to distract the security guards attention).

The level of protection should always correspond to the level of threat or overlap it. Therefore threat assessment is one of the most important components of security protection. It should never end, as it is a continuous process, which should consider any changes in the situation and new information.

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