“You should have your own ‘early warning system,’ because the government may not always be there to warn you on time,” said Counterterrorism Expert Elsa Lee, CEO, Advantage SCI, El Segundo, California.

“When the Department of Homeland Security announces that your company is on a terrorist target list, you have just received ‘actionable intelligence, act on it,” said Counterterrorism Expert Elsa Lee,  Lee who worked under four United States presidents, is the founder of Advantage SCI in El Segundo, California.

Implement the terrorism response plan – which hopefully has already been communicated to employees and rehearsed at least once. The rehearsal will have told you under certain actions to take such as when to step up security, when to have certain employees work from home, when to conduct 100 percent vehicle inspections on your premises, what signage to post during high alert periods, and when to increase your guard force.

All plans should have a sequence of measures, how direct resources, and role player responsibilities for prevention, detection, and response. If prevention measures don’t succeed at deterring and detection measures fail, the odds of preventing an attack on the day of execution are not good.

Planning an attack takes time. Terrorists are most vulnerable during their planning stages and their behaviors – not their appearance – will usually give them away. This may include photographing, pacing, counting, looking at a watch, sketching on a notepad, and frequenting the same area. Some areas where this may be observed are at Icon companies and in the vicinity of organizations that provide public services like financial institutions, transportation systems, telecommunications, government buildings, and hospitals to name a few.

Next steps would generally involve escalation of security measures or having your organization escalate to threat condition Orange or Delta if you want to follow the military alert system. Establish an open channel of communication with internal and external players such as employees, company vendors, stakeholders, law enforcement, other businesses in the vicinity, and the press.

You will want to preempt any loss of consumer, employee, or stakeholder confidence in your ability to respond effectively to the identified threat

Lastly, the threat of terrorism in the US has been building up for at least 20 years. The government may take years to give direction to the private sector on terrorism preparedness and response. Companies should take responsibility for preparedness to synchronize private and public sector response and make it impossible for terrorists to target any organization.

Former US Army counterintelligence and Counterterrorism Agent Elsa Lee is making the most of her 20 years as a counter terrorism agent, investigator, task force member and high level government advisor. Lee is putting all that experience to good use to give business and government practical and useful advice for terrorism deterrence at the company she founded – Advantage SCI, based in El Segundo, California, which holds one of the most impressive records when it comes to diminishing vulnerability to terrorism.