Center for Personal Protection & Safety - CPPS

As a business traveler, are you prepared for detainment by a foreign agency?

Most business travelers aren't, and that isn't an alarmist statement. This is a real gap that shows up in almost every travel risk program we assess.

Detention doesn't always look the way people expect...

Being pulled into a secondary conversation at customs isn't the same as being detained, but without context, it can feel that way. The distinction is that situations matter, because how someone responds in those moments can determine what happens next.

The risks vary depending on who's traveling and who they represent. An individual traveler faces a different threat profile than an executive from a large multinational organization. Both need to understand what they're walking into before they get there.

It's not just about worst-case scenarios either. Driving on the other side of the road in Ireland is a different kind of risk than navigating a secondary inspection in the Middle East. Both are real. Both require preparation.

Travelers face a wide spectrum of issues, and that's exactly why preparation needs to be specific.

Workplace violence happens in several ways. Unfortunately, some organizations only prepare for one or two.

In fact, OSHA recognizes four types of workplace violence: criminal, customer or client, worker on worker, and interpersonal or domestic. Each one requires a different prevention approach. Each one carries its own warning signs.

The type organizations most often miss is also the most dangerous. Intimate partner violence does not stay at home. It follows people to work, and when it does, the entire workplace is exposed.

Preparation that only accounts for what you see most often leaves gaps that do not show up until something goes wrong.

Workplace violence prevention is not just about policies. It's about understanding all four sources of risk, building cultures where people feel safe reporting concerns, and having real support systems in place before they are needed.

If your program is only built around one or two of these, it's worth taking a closer look at what you might be missing.

Safety is not just the security team's job.

That's easy to say but often hard to operationalize. Frontline employees assume security has it covered. Executives push back on protection because they don't see themselves as targets. Organizations move forward without ever building the culture that actually prevents, or at least detects, potential incidents.

This is starting to change. Boards are pushing executives to take their own security seriously. Organizations are recognizing that single-issue extremists and grievance-driven threats do not target only the most recognizable names in an industry. The healthcare sector learned that lesson in a very public and painful way.

But the cultural shift that matters most needs to happen at every level of an organization, not just the top.

When frontline employees understand what to look for and feel confident reporting it, they become part of the prevention system. The expertise to act on those observations already exists inside most organizations. The gap is usually observation and reporting.

Security is everyone's role. It does not require a badge or a title. It requires awareness and the confidence to say something when something feels wrong.