Achieving Organizational Situational Awareness

Collectively, sharing a situationally aware “state of mind” requires an unwavering focus on maintaining the right signal v. noise ratios, working from the same data, and collaborating effectively and efficiently. 

Too many false alarms and false positives override the ability to focus on what matters. Yet, not being able to make sense of faint patterns can be devastating. This means that senior risk and physical security teams routinely must focus attention to operational noise, understand the current state, and predict potential outcomes. 

This is not easy.

Risk mitigation tasks often focus on high-likelihood/low impact or headline-grabbing high-impact/low-likelihood events. When threats and critical events happen, post-mortems and After Action Reports (AARs) often reveal the cause to be simple human frailty or lack of attention. 

When improving enterprise situational awareness, three critical pieces must be examined:

• • • SPACE – is our understanding of our operating space where it needs to be? Do we know where our people are at all times? What about our assets such as vehicles?  
    • PROCESS – do we have processes in place for rapidly responding to incidents? Do we have SOPs for the known knowns as well the, to quote Donald Rumsfeld, the “unknown unknowns?”
    • ABILITY TO EXECUTE – Do we know where our assets are in real time and do we have the capacity to support them during a critical event with medical attention, guidance, or other hands-on capabilities?
      

These three pieces require systems and processes to support them. Here are a few:

• • • FILTERS – Can we separate signal from noise and act on information quickly?
    • PATTERN RECOGNITION – Are we using AI or Machine Learning to quickly seek patterns in the data? Are we selectively treating some signals as white noise?
    • TIME AND ATTENTION – Is our SOC staff properly staffed? Do we have enough people to pay attention to the right things?
    • SOPs  – Do we have Standard Operating Processes and Procedures in place for responding to critical events? Does our staff understand the systems, processes, and collaboration tools needed for the task at hand?

Becoming a situationally aware organization does not happen overnight. It requires a commitment from leadership to understand and define the actual operational processes, give focus and attention to the things that matter, listen actively and become aware of the overall threat landscape.