Hotels, Shopping Centres, Rail, Airline - Modern Security Operations
The Safest Place in the world
In my position as the head of security, I spent plenty of time on protective details outside the shopping centre.
Popular shopping area though it was, for me it was the venue to secure, a set of halls, corners and doors to surveil and assess. Protecting the infrastructure has always been a huge task, handled by a mix of Police Patrols, Overt and Covert security operators.
Being counter surveillance trained, we would spend long hours standing watch outside the location, at the main mall and carpark area known to us as "Zone 1." Our assignment was different from the norm, because entry and departures are chokepoints — perfect attack venues.
We would dress our surveillance agents down, out of our suits and in casual clothes, with jackets hiding our radio equipment, and handcuffs. The job was to blend in and not look like we were watching, all the while staying laser-focused on trying to spot the bad guys who may have also been surveiling the area.
It was a lonely job. There were hours of boredom, black coffee, cold mornings and sometimes rain, surrounded by brief radio calls of "Observations of behaviour" into our earpieces from CCTV operators and proactive uniform patrols.
But all the effort was worth it, because when we were posted outside and inside, the venue may easily have been the most well-protected location – or so we thought.
A Wake-Up Call
In 2013, we discovered that our assigned area was one of several planned targets in a terrorist plot that – fortunately – never came to fruition.
An attack team would deploy from the back of a stolen truck. The team would then toss hand grenades and fire AK-47s, targeting the people in the locations.
That was not the end of it. Following information seized after a planned arrest , all kinds of other plans, some of which seemed to be pulled right out of a thriller novel. Some attack scenarios involved infiltrating the hotel dressed as staff and waiters before sneaking up the stairwells on nights when the terrorists knew we had fewer agents on duty. They had done their homework.
A key and yet frightening lesson from this detected plot was the degree of pre-operational surveillance that the terrorists had conducted, despite the numbers of Police and Security Operators at the locations. We never saw them. We never caught wind of their plans or their presence. And if they had opted to go through with their attack, we may well have been caught unprepared.
Needless to say, the discovery of these plots was a wake-up call for security professionals. Everyone remembers the Mumbai attacks, but it was the terrorist plots we uncovered in the aftermath of the attack that forced Profano to make positive changes in protection practices. We adjusted our training programmes to include a protective mindset and tactics to improve protection by greatly enhancing security operators counter surveillance methods. To stop the attack cycle, Protaris Advanced Observation Programmes were designed to interrupt and spot the surveillance before plans were put into place.
None of the plots against our assignment ever came to fruition.
After we began improving our counter surveillance methods, the lonely hours we spent analysing areas and operational plans became more worthwhile. We knew to look not only for potential attackers but also for people who seemed to be staking out the site, possibly formulating a plan for a future attack.
Our job became a chess match of sorts with our adversaries. I like to think we will win.
