Close-up of a security professional in a black suit and tie standing in front of a white luxury vehicle, wearing an earpiece. An executive sits inside of the vehicle, focused on a tablet device. The scene indicates executive protection, vigilance, and high-level security services. — Photo by iStock

Benchmarking: ASIS Research Findings and the Executive Protection Standard

By Scott Briscoe

8 December 2025

Looking for ways to improve your executive protection (EP) program? It’s time for a gap analysis between recent ASIS research findings and a new standard about executive protection.

The ASIS research study, The Executive Threat Environment: Benchmarking Research on Risk-Based Approaches to Executive Protection, which was sponsored by Everbridge, collected and analyzed responses from 824 individuals. The extensive questionnaire covered a wide array of executive protection practices, procedures, technologies, and processes.

ASIS also published the Executive Protection Standard in September 2025 to “offer detailed guidance on implementing a comprehensive executive protection program, ensuring the safety of high-profile individuals while effectively managing and mitigating security risks.”

Naturally, the research touches on many areas covered in the standard, highlighting some standard requirements and recommendations that are being appropriately addressed and others that are lagging behind.

For these findings, only organizations that reported they had an executive protection program were included, while those without EP programs and those whose program is only in the planning stages were excluded. Thus, the research findings in this article are slightly different than what was published in the primary report.

Documenting Effectiveness

Standard: The organization shall document the executive protection program, including incident reports and investigations, and program evaluations and management reviews.

Research finding: Among organizations with some kind of EP program, the primary method used to evaluate the program is executive feedback. Just half make use of incident tracking for evaluation, and less than half employ key performance indicators or some other kind of metric. Nearly a third report no formal evaluation process at all.

How is the effectiveness of your executive protection program evaluated?
Executive feedback	68 percent
Incident tracking	50 percent
Internal key performance indicators (KPIs)	45 percent
Third-party audits	25 percent
No formal evaluation	30 percent

Communication

Standard: The organization shall establish, implement, and maintain communications procedures.

Research finding: Of organizations with some kind of executive protection program, the two leading communication tools used to coordinate EP operations are secure mobile applications and standard texting or emails. Fewer organizations reported use of a dedicated security command center or encrypted radios.

The following are responses from survey participants who selected the “other” choice: satellite phones, backup cell phones, and a mobile command center.

What communications tools do you use to coordinate executive protection operations?
Secure mobile apps	65%
Standard SMS/email	64%
Dedicated security command center	45%
Encrypted radios	42%
Other	5%

Incident Response and Emergency Management

Standard: The executive protection program shall establish, implement, and maintain procedures for emergency response planning based on protective intelligence information and the security risk assessment. Procedures shall address contingency planning as well.

Research finding: The survey asked security professionals if they had specific incident response protocols for different types of potential executive protection incidents. Nearly 20 percent responded that they had no such protocols in place. For each specific incident type, less than two-thirds of security professionals said they had specific protocols for that type of incident.

Does your EP team have a specific incident response protocol for the following types of incidents?
Physical assault or assassination attempt	63 percent
Major medical incidents (emergency room or ambulatory type of event)	63 percent
Kidnapping	57 percent
Major travel disruption	52 percent
Minor medical incidents (clinic or doctor-only level of event)	46 percent
Cybersecurity or IT compromise	37 percent
No specific incident response protocols	18 percent

Protective Intelligence

Standard: Protective intelligence (PI) is a critical element of an executive protection program. PI seeks to understand protected persons and the threat environment associated with those persons; it serves as the foundation for continuously identifying sources of risk and providing information to serve as the basis for integrating or scaling of executive protection protective measures.

Research finding: Organizations reported using a wide range of intelligence sources in assessing threats to executives. More than half of organizations use each specific type of intelligence method, with open-source intelligence and social media leading the way.

What methods are used for assessing threats to executives?
Open-source intelligence	82 percent
Social media monitoring	79 percent
Crime or violence reports from governmental authorities	68 percent
Human intelligence	67 percent
Physical surveillance	65 percent
Threat intelligence feeds	64 percent
Internal incident reports	62 percent
Background checks	58 percent

Family Safety Programs

Standard: Family safety programs are established to identify risks towards family members of a principal and aim at ensuring an adequate level of protection is provided to them. In some circumstances, residential staff and residential service providers may be considered within the family safety programs.

The executive protection program shall establish, implement, and maintain procedures for identifying the need for a family safety program, based on the protective intelligence information and the security risk assessment.

Research finding: The standard provided several areas that should be considerations as part of a family safety program.

Here are research findings related to three of the areas:

Assigning protective personnel to family members and residence: 30 percent of organizations report being fully capable of providing close protection agents working with family members.
Implementing additional physical security measures at home and other locations: 51 percent of organizations report being fully capable of surveillance or manned security at private locations such as a residence, office, or other venue).
Providing travel safety protocols: 46 percent of executive protection programs include family or other travelling companions in pre-travel security briefings.