Risk assessment is the chief measure in the risk management process. Risk assessment is the reckoning of a quantitative or qualitative value of risk related to a concrete state of affairs and an already established threat. While our agents are well-trained and prepared to diffuse highly volatile situations, Matcal International’s policy is that the best protective strategy is prevention. The goal of Matcal International’s threat assessment efforts is to effectively protect our clients by detecting, evaluating and managing persons, places or threats who have the interest and/or capacity to launch attacks before they have a chance to occur.

No feature of a security program is more imperative than precisely evaluating and managing potential safety hazards before they develop. Matcal International works hard to achieve this through a collective team of expert opinion provided by contracted professional specialists and behavioral scientists combined with relevant research and case histories as well as other extensive resources that are committed to determining the appropriate approach to each and every case individually.

When assessing a threat it is important to remember that presenting a threat is different than actually posing a threat. A threat is only one indication towards violent behavior. For the same reason a medical professional would never base a whole diagnosis on only one symptom, at Matcal International it is our policy to assess the context of a situation by examining the underlying factors. An example that can be used to illustrate this concept is that the language employed in a posed threat does not directly determine the probability of violence. A verbal threat does in fact call attention to a state of affairs but is almost always an insignificant factor in determining a violent outcome in a situation. There are specific initial warnings that generally transpire before an incident, that when evaluated by trained and practiced specialists may establish whether or not a threat is viable.

For threat assessment specialists the issue at hand is prevention not prediction and determining this distinction is a key element in the decision making process of whether or not to invest credibility in a threat or to disregard it. Assessments have varying degrees of success but at Matcal International we do not merely stand aside and wait to see what happens but intervene in order to directly influence a positive outcome. It is not enough to be prepared to diffuse a situation rather to be capable of preventing it from ever occurring.