An updated guide to threat and risk assessment approaches for security professionals, this guide is meant to define, provide resources, and help you identify threat assessment training and resources that might help you and your personnel.

Lethal and non-lethal violent acts on school property are becoming more and more common, ranging from the most horrific shooting events to schoolyard fights. In this post, we will describe school threat assessment and the challenges associated with school safety. Also included are resources on critical topics. Lastly, we describe how active threat assessment and situational awareness training can help school personnel prevent violence.

Are there training programs that focus on proactive safety and threat recognition for law enforcement and security professionals? We built our training around a structured, four-step observation process, not intuition or guesswork, that equips law enforcement, security, and safety professionals to recognize meaningful behavioral deviations and make defensible decisions before situations escalate.

Preventing a mass attack is an achievable goal. The FBI's 2025 data shows nearly 68% of active shooter incidents involved identifiable planning and preparation beforehand, and for the first time, the Bureau documented cases where observation and reporting likely prevented an attack. We explain "left of boom," and why structured, prevention-focused observation, not tactical response training, is what gives law enforcement, security, and workplace personnel the chance to intervene before an incident begins.

One of our trainees, monitoring a camera feed at a protest of 300 to 400 people, picked out a single individual whose posture, clothing, and movement didn't fit the crowd around him, and it led to a confirmed handgun. We walk through exactly how that cluster of behaviors was read in real time, and why the same skill applies just as directly to a hospital security desk, a school hallway camera, or a corporate operations center.

Trainees telling you they feel more prepared is one thing. Real evidence they actually are is another. We break down our training evaluation across three levels, what personnel report, what they demonstrably learn, and how it holds up in the field, including a documented case of a trainee applying it successfully months after training.

Online training is not a panacea. It is not a replacement for instructor-led training. But there are distinct benefits, and downsides, to each type of training delivery.

Not every location is the same, so we can't assume people will behave the same way everywhere. We explain why every location needs its own behavioral baseline, from a mall in Southeast Asia to a market in Turkey, and how law enforcement and security professionals can systematically assess one before they can spot a meaningful deviation from it.

Learn about the origin of active threat assessment for law enforcement through the Just Doesn’t Look Right Project and the Identifying Threats Training Program.

Every profession develops its own shorthand, and structured observation is no different. We break down why a shared, trained vocabulary matters for law enforcement and security professionals communicating what they observe, in real time and in reports, and why it becomes even more essential on teams built from mixed backgrounds like law enforcement, corrections, and military.