Security Assessment Guide

Gather and analyze existing policies, facility plans, incident reports, crime trends, and land-use data to establish a baseline. The security assessment should be an independent and systematic evaluation of a facility's threats, risks, and vulnerabilities. A comprehensive evaluation includes analysis to determine a facility's physical security and its safety protocols' effectiveness. We recognize that a security assessment should focus on more than just the building layout and security systems - it also considers current operations and operating procedures, protective systems and measures currently in use, crime trends and land use plans in the local area, incident reports, and other available information related to known threats and intelligence on the safety and security of each facility.

Perform on-site evaluations of physical security features, operational procedures, and policy effectiveness. Facilitate interviews with key staff to understand security culture. Our comprehensive process is a unique combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis. Security involves people at all levels, so the qualitative elements of our process include facilitated group sessions and interviews with key personnel at each location. This allows us to gather input on the culture of the building's occupants and existing security policies and procedures and their effectiveness.

Use the SAFE tool to score how well the facility meets security and safety requirements on a scale of 0–100. Our innovative Security Assessment and Facility Evaluation (SAFE) tool drives the quantitative analysis. We have developed a rigorous and comprehensive process that utilizes the SAFE tool to evaluate and score how well an organization's physical space and operations meet its security and safety requirements. The SAFE tool contains a wide array of security performance metrics and can be tailored for the unique security requirements of each organization. The tool includes over 200 security-related factors and accompanying performance measures, which can be tailored to assess a specific type of building or portfolio of buildings in any location.

Compare improvement strategies against the existing SAFE score to determine how each closes security gaps. Estimate costs and calculate cost-effectiveness ratios. One of the key benefits of the SAFE tool is that it can be used to score an improvement strategy, so a comparison can be made to determine how well the strategy closes the gap between the existing SAFE score and an ideal security score of 100. Typically, an ideal score is not possible in all facilities given the physical limitations and constraints of buildings; therefore, the goal is to optimize the recommendations so that the score for each location can be increased to its greatest value

Produce a detailed Facility Assessment Report and prioritization plan. Identify critical, standard, and optimal strategies. Develop a multi-year capital improvement plan with cost estimates and training recommendations. Following the interviews, reviews of policies, and facility assessments, a detailed report that documents the assessment results is produced. Utilizing the objective results generated by the SAFE tool, the report describes each facility's specific security deficiencies and provides recommendations for facility or policy improvements that mitigate or reduce the risk. Each deficiency and associated improvement strategy is identified by one of three levels based on its urgency of need: Critical strategies should be implemented immediately to address urgent deficiencies, Standard strategies should be implemented in the near future to meet basic security standards, and Optimal strategies would surpass basic standards.