While the COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating to many businesses both large and small across the country, others have seen demand for their services and solutions increase significantly. Such is the case with Navigate360, which has been called upon by numerous schools and private organizations to help provide a holistic risk mitigation approach for them to reopen in the face of the ongoing coronavirus threat.
According to Joseph Hendry, Director of Risk Assessments for Navigate360, the firm was borne out of the merger of three different organizations including; ALICE Training Institute, one of the leading providers of active shooter response training; NaviGate Prepared, a developer of software for schools to aid them in creating student threat assessments, safety planning, and drill scheduling and logging among other features; and SafePlans, creator of the Emergency Response Information Portal (ERIP), an all-hazards emergency preparedness platform. ALICE Training Institute acquired SafePlans last June and quickly followed it up by purchasing NaviGate Prepared in November.
“It fleshed out the company so that we were getting all of the aspects of safety from a company standpoint in terms of prevention, preparation, response, and the recovery phase,” explains Hendry, who served in the same role with ALICE Training Institute prior to the combination of the three companies. “As a company, it made us a lot of more well-rounded to deal with our clients. ALICE had a risk assessment division and for years we were being asked by our clients to do risk assessments in addition to the active shooter training, so with these new platforms – behavioral threat assessment and mapping of the facilities – it really brought everything together so that we’re very much a full service company now and we’re not just hitting one section of the market.”
Although a wide range of organizations have sent employees to attend ALICE trainings through the years, Hendry says the addition of NaviGate Prepared has really bolstered their business when it comes to providing things like risk assessments for commercial facilities as it is easily adaptable from schools to other environments. “The product doesn’t change based on who the client is, so we get a lot of business clients now in addition to all of the K-12 clients that everyone already has and are developing,” he adds.
Impact of the Pandemic
With the onset of COVID-19 and higher education campuses reopening and subsequently being forced to shut back down following spikes in infections of the disease, Hendry says many colleges and universities have come to the realization that they should have been doing risks assessments during the summer months that could have given them the opportunity to better predict and prepare for these issues.
“I’ve seen a lot of it in the security field and I’ve talked to a lot of people I deal with in the industry. For instance, I sit on the ASIS School Safety and Security Council and a lot of the guys on the council we’ve talked to over the summer are seeing a lot people focused on COVID but they didn’t focus on the risk side of reopening and what that looked like,” he explains. “A lot of people opened and then they shut back down, they’re having mass outbreaks and that risk piece got missed, so we’re seeing more interest from higher education than we have in the past for some of our products. I think people realized what their pain points became and trying to get people to realize that COVID is an issue obviously, but all of the things that affected them before still exist and you can’t be singular in your focus.”
Having served 27 years in law enforcement and in the Marine Corps for six years prior to that, Hendry says the past two months helping clients navigate the challenges brought about by the pandemic have been the busiest he has ever experienced. “In some ways, (COVID-19) has increased their awareness as it relates to infectious diseases and the things that you have to do to prepare for that,” he says.
Ironically, Hendry was working with an end user at the beginning of the year before the full extent of the disease’s ramifications were realized, who opposed have contingencies for a pandemic included in their emergency operation plan.
“They were almost adamant with me that they did not need a pandemic response plan, that it wasn’t going to happen,” Hendry explains. “This was in January and I kind of took a hard stance with them and said: ‘You need to have this in your plan.’ Luckily, we end up putting it in and they had to utilize it two months later.”
The Challenges Ahead
Aside from COVID-19, Hendry says that more organizations are beginning to focus on behavioral threat assessments as another way to mitigate risk.
“It was really starting to increase even before COVID happened. Obviously, the best thing to do is try to prevent an incident from happening,” he says. “But we’ve seen a renewed focus on it and, basically because of COVID and the amount of stress that people are under in the workplace and how it effects them… people are trying to get that equilibrium restored and figure out who needs some assistance here because this is affecting people in the workplace and how we interact with each other.”
Hendry says one of the biggest traps that organizations fall into is when they become prisoners of the moment; an incident like an active shooter or COVID-19 happens and then all of their attention immediately becomes focused on that and not on the wider array of risks that they must account for.
“We focus too much in one area and instead of just making it a priority and not forgetting about everything else, I think it overarches everything that we do, and we forget about everything,” he adds.
During this year’s virtual GSX+ conference, which will be the first time the company has exhibited as a combined organization, Hendry says they will be looking to highlight how these and other issues are impacting today’s schools and workplaces and how they can be adequately addressed. To learn more about what the company is doing during GSX+, visit their website here.
Joel Griffin is the Editor-in-Chief of SecurityInfoWatch.com and a veteran security journalist. You can reach him at [email protected].
