Conducting a security vulnerability assessment

Because of various tragic events over the past two years, camps are taking a closer look at their overall security. While there are several ways to review program security, it is good to start with assessing a program’s vulnerabilities. The National Fire Prevention Association (NFPA) has developed a systematic assessment process that you might find helpful.

According to NFPA 730, Guide for Premises Security, a security vulnerability assessment should include, but not be limited to, the following steps:

Step 1:

Formation of a team – Form a team of personnel from pertinent organizational areas and other stakeholders.

Step 2:

Organization/facility characterization – Characterize the organization and the facilities to be protected.

Step 3:

Threat assessment – Classify threats using an assessment process that includes but is not limited to the following:

• A classification of critical assets
• Identification of potential targets
• Consequence analysis (i.e. effect of loss, including any potential off-site consequence)
• Definition of potential threats (i.e. identify potential adversaries and what is known about them)

Step 4:

Threat vulnerability analysis – Conduct a threat vulnerability analysis identifying actual and potential threat scenarios and estimate a relative security risk level.
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Step 5:

Specific security countermeasures – Define countermeasures using information from the previous four steps, including characterization, threat, and vulnerability analysis.

Step 6:

Risk reduction – Reassess the relative security risk levels developed in Step 4, taking into account countermeasures defined in Step 5, and implement additional security risk reduction measures (security countermeasures) where appropriate.

Step 7:

Documentation and tracking – Document findings and recommendations and track the implementation of accepted recommendations.

You can obtain a copy of this guide through the NFPA (nfpa.org).