Authored by Graeme Hudson and Philip Kennington
Effective crisis management starts well before the critical incident itself, and organizations looking to operate securely in the fast-changing conditions of places like Ukraine need to harness the power of ground truth.
That’s how organizations with a comprehensive portfolio of resources and intelligence — from a physical “boots on the ground” approach to harnessing and analyzing the crucial intelligence from thousands of sources — allow them to protect people, assets, and organizations worldwide through effective crisis management.
Intelligence informs both planning for crises — shaping contingency plans based on actual or realistically potential situations — and the crisis management required when situations change or deteriorate. In order to provide the most effective services when it comes to crisis planning, security, and safety, organizations need an array of intelligence sources, from commercially available satellite coverage and privileged human intelligence (HUMINT) to open source intelligence (OSINT) gathered and vetted for utmost accuracy.
“During a crisis, ground truths are absolutely essential,” says security risk and crisis management expert Graeme Hudson. His operational support teams develop what Graeme calls “bespoke, spotlight intelligence projects.” Those, he says, “provide essential situational awareness that allows the crisis management team to make the most informed decisions.” In Ukraine, for example, teams deployed on the ground are physically engaging assets and making their own observations, breaking through any clutter or misconceptions that might be portrayed in the media or online sources.
Another example, Hudson notes, is a situation in which a client was attempting to self-evacuate from Ukraine shortly after the Russian invasion and requesting remote support from Crisis24. Using on-the-ground assets in each of the bordering countries (Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova), the team was able to advise the client on the best route to take, avoiding recent military action and areas that were likely to be heavily congested due to checkpoints or other obstacles.
The client was monitored remotely using cell phone tracking until they had successfully crossed into Slovakia, approximately 24 hours later. In any crisis situation, it’s imperative for organizations to have a plan in place in order to protect their people and assets. To really set a team apart, however, is the merging of security, crisis management, and operations. While many companies might provide crisis management remotely, in the Crisis24 approach, says Hudson, “team members are physically on the ground and engaging. We’ve developed local assets that we can draw upon and use to help inform.”
Why is ground truth so important? Because it comes into play long before any crisis point and can inform other aspects of the overall plan or process in invaluable ways: “Early in contingency planning work, companies should use the most up-to-date intelligence as a ‘sanity check’ to demonstrate ground truth,” says risk consultant Philip Kennington. “If the client is on board with the ground truth, you can then use experience and ongoing monitoring to suggest scenarios that could occur.”
The benefit to the client is twofold. On the front end, the use of ground truth and other intelligence, feeds into developing crisis management plans to help to make sure that any plans being put together are contingent on the real events that might be occurring on the ground.
Another benefit of accurate intelligence is that it allows companies and their clients to continually reevaluate developing situations relative to the “trigger points” identified in each client’s contingency plan. That promotes quick reactions based on actual threats when situations do change, ensuring that the actions taken are the best for the circumstances.
Experiences in the weeks leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, provide a case in point, says Hudson: “Misinformation ahead of the invasion created a general lack of trust in what people were hearing in the media and from government officials, and it really impacted the speed and the decisions that were being made by our client organizations.”
Without a doubt, misinformation will muddy the waters and make it difficult for people to make the right decisions. However, intelligence companies with a thoughtful risk management approach are able to provide clarity around what is actually happening, thanks to a network of carefully vetted sources and a strategically tailored contingency plan.
