13 Steps Organizations Can Take to Prepare for a Bomb Threat

Bomb threats can be transmitted in a variety of ways—through social media, the mail, or even over the phone—for a host of reasons from inciting panic, disrupting operations, or causing economic harm. Regardless of the method or the intention behind the threat, though, organizations must take these threats seriously.

Here are 13 training steps from the ASIS International Protection of Assets manuals that all organizations can take to prepare for a bomb threat.

1. Develop a threat evaluation team of security, managers, administrators, supervisors, and other leadership for the facility or organization.
   
   
2. Create an internal reporting channel for employees to communicate a threat to the appropriate person.
   
   
3. Identify which local first responder agency to contact for immediate response to a bomb threat.
   
   
4. Implement a sitewide communication ability and write scripts to communicate an evacuation in response to a bomb threat.
   
   
5. Designate an evacuation area beyond a potential blast radius.
   
   
6. Designate an information or media point-of-contact for public relations, customer messaging, and crisis communications.
   
   
7. Create a mobile threat/evacuation kit that includes maps of the office or facility; contact details for leadership; keys or access cards; and access codes, usernames, and passwords for critical software applications such as surveillance cameras, access control systems, and life/emergency systems.
   
   
8. Create bomb threat cards to place near office phones. These cards should have training instructions on how an employee should respond to a bomb threat that is made over the phone.
   
   
9. Create and implement strategies to keep a threatening caller on the phone.
   
   
10. Implement the ability to record phone calls or have other employees listen in on the call the threat is being made during.
    
    
11. Inspect all areas biannually where telephone calls are accepted to ensure bomb threat response cards are there.
    
    
12. Review with staff forensic and safety considerations if a threat is received via email, fax, or other electronic communication—like social media.
    
    
13. Practice bomb threat response annually and include training in all new employees’ onboarding.

For more insights and information on how to prepare for, respond to, and recover from a bomb threat, review the Protection of Assets: Crisis Management.

Megan Gates is senior editor at Security Management. Connect with her at [email protected] or on LinkedIn. Follow her on Twitter: @mgngates.