Time-critical threats require immediate responses from personnel who handle such situations. You can design an automated system workflow that performs actions based on operator responses to dynamic user procedure. This reduces the strain on personnel and removes any ambiguity in the decision-making process in life-threatening situations.
Actions to take when a bomb threat is detected
When a suspicious item believed to contain explosives or hazardous material is detected, it needs to be evaluated with specialized equipment and trained personnel. There needs to be a bomb threat response plan in place to guide ground staff handling such situations.
- Notify site decision makers and local law enforcement.
- Clear the area of personnel.
- Ensure that emergency responders are briefed.
Considerations for suspicious item or Bomb threat incident configuration
- Identity
- Define the incident. Select an icon and color scheme that will immediately capture your operator's attention in the Incident monitoring task in Security Desk.
- Properties
- Set the initial priority of the incident. In this example, it is set to
Critical.
Select the option to allow operators to manually trigger the incident. This enables the operators to trigger the incident on the map in Security Desk when needed.
Select the retention period for incident details. You might need to save details of this incident for analysis later.
Set the maximum response time within which you want the operators to take action. You need your operators to respond immediately to this threat. Select the option to notify the Supervisors and incident recipients when this response time is not respected.
- Recipients
- This is a serious threat. Supervisors and Administrators need to be notified.
- Triggers
- Depending on your system setup, you can use a combination of events as system triggers for this incident. In this example, the triggers are a combination of camera tampering followed by an object being detected in field. You can configure this on the Properties page of the Incident configuration task in Config Tool.
- User procedure
- After the incident is triggered, the operators must execute a threat assessment based on established procedures and validate the threat. In this scenario, incident procedures must give the operator options depending on the situation in real-time. You can configure multiple options using dynamic SOPs.
- Automation
- Your incident automation workflow design must automate selected system activities to free up the operator's time to focus on the immediate threat. You can design your incident automation workflow to adapt to the situation in real-time and direct incident resolution activities accordingly.
- Threat levels
- For serious threats like a Bomb threat incident, you might need to set up system wide or location based threat levels.
- Document management
- Emergency procedures such as Bomb threat incidents need to follow established procedures. You can link procedural documents, emergency contact lists, and so on to the incident from the Document management page in the Incident configuration task in Config Tool.
Threat level configuration for Bomb threat incidents
For potentially dangerous situations that require an immediate response from the system and security personnel, you can set up threat levels in the Config Tool. You can associate a list of actions for the system to perform when the threat level is executed and another list of actions when the threat is cleared.
- Arming the zone where the threat is detected.
- Unlocking the door to evacuate personnel in the area.
- Sounding the buzzer to notify people of a threat.
- Recording the events at the incident location.
Threat levels apply to events that affect an entire system or a whole area, unlike alarms that deal with localized events.
User procedure for Bomb threat incidents
In a Bomb threat scenario, your operators must first perform a threat assessment. Based on the results of the assessment and the validity of the threat they must have procedures to resolve the incident. You can use dynamic user procedures to do this.
- Operators get visual confirmation through video units in the area.
- If no threat is detected, resolve the incident and enter details into the incident log.
- If the video evidence is inconclusive, dispatch a patrol to inspect the item.
- Based on the patrol team's response, operators can call for help or resolve the incident as a false alarm.
The operator's response to the dynamic SOP can be used to automate specific system actions.
Document management for Bomb threat incidents
You can associate incident-specific documents from the Document management section in the Incident configuration task. These documents can be links to external sites, the internal network, or PDF documents associated with the incident.
Depending on your requirements, you can associate different documents for different locations, user groups, or schedules.
In this example, there is a link to a topic on the Canadian government website that provides guidelines for managing such situations. The link is specific to the Bomb threat incident and will be displayed in the Incident monitoring task in Security Desk for the Operators user group only.