Author: Cristina Cruz and Andy Jabbour

FM Issue: September/October 2018

According to Statista, the most recent known numbers indicate that Facebook has over 2.19 billion monthly active users, Instagram over 1 billion, LinkedIn has over 467 million members, Twitter boasts over 336 million monthly active users, and Telegram over 100 million. Snapchat, the social media of choice among many younger users, has over 191 million daily active users worldwide, and fitness app Strava adds a million new members every 45 days.

Huge numbers! Amazing potential audiences! Ample cover for criminals, extremists, and other bad actors to plan, communicate, threaten, attack and otherwise potentially harm business operations.

Social media has become a great resource for intelligence analysts and, in an age of digital conversations, it has become the go to “voice” for many – including security-focused individuals from analysts to senior leaders. Unfortunately, social media is also being used for nefarious reasons – to include extremist recruitment, radicalization, propaganda, and coordination among threat actors. Social media presents both tremendous opportunities and very real risks.

There is no single best way to approach social media awareness and use. For small venues, it may be occasional scanning of key terms and locations, for robust teams it may include third-party monitoring and dedicated resources, others may work hand-in-hand with their marketing or communications teams, and others may use innovative technology and other solutions to help maintain awareness and communicate with the public.

However it is approached, the following notes some of the ways in which venue leaders may want to consider social media, and how they can use it to help security operations. Among the key questions organizations and leaders now need to consider are: What are the threats from social media that our organization faces and how vulnerable are we to such threats? What are the potential business impacts from such threats? How much exposure and risk is there to us individually and for our organizations?

Awareness and Community Engagement

Community engagement is very important for both private and public-sector venues for a number of reasons – from brand, venue, and product sentiment, to community sentiment towards the venue and its personnel, as well as for opportunities to engage with community leaders, public officials, and event coordinators. Many organizations monitor their brands for marketing purposes. What’s being said about an upcoming event or performer, a new product or sponsor, an advertising campaign, a new feature, a newly renovated area, etc.

Similarly, security leaders can see how the brand or venue is being discussed in social media settings with an eye towards potential indicators of security threats. Are individuals or groups complaining about an upcoming performer’s recent actions or statements that is scheduled for your venue or an event sponsor or participant that is causing some type of controversy and is there discussion of any type of response action either physical or cyber? Are issues with a new campaign being seen as offensive or in poor taste and angering any individuals or communities? Has an incident caused dissatisfaction or irritation with patrons or others and are there any associated security concerns? Has something happened in the community that is causing angst and are there associated impacts to your organization (for instance look to March’s Sacramento shooting incident resulting in the death of Mr. Stephon Clark and the way that the Sacramento Kings expertly used social media and community engagement to respectfully address the incident and the Golden 1 Center’s security challenges; the incident and follow-on serve as examples of how an unrelated tragedy may manifest as a venue security issue and of positive engagement and messaging by the Kings). With these and other situations, collaboration among marketing and security personnel, or awareness by responsible individuals at smaller venues, can lead to proactive identification of potential and emerging security concerns, allowing leaders to consider any appropriate and desired security measures – from increasing physical security measures, to increased network monitoring, to communications actions, local coordination with hometown security partners, etc.

Physical Security Threat and Incident Awareness

From planned events (such as protests and rallies), to emerging incidents (such as reports of fighting, shots fired, and other security events), to longer-term event preparation and response (including anticipated flooding, hurricanes, and other severe weather), social media is a remarkable tool that can provide real-time situational awareness and information, often ahead of formal reporting channels, and with all the challenges of mass amounts of raw information, including incorrect, incomplete, and false reports, as well as an abundance of opinion and confusion.

• Social media is an invaluable tool for analysts when attempting to get at the forefront of being made aware of an incident and / or event that may have the potential for business impacts. During events, it can be amazing to see how many people will post or leverage social media forums to report or provide their “opinions” on events that occur, whether it is a car accident, traffic incidents and event potential terrorist events, to mention a few.
• Being made aware of a potential protest that could attract a significant amount of participants can posture both law enforcement and the private sector to be able to respond and posture resources.
• Social media also allows for monitoring posts on certain websites that can be threatening as a result of a possibly disgruntled employee or other potential threat.

Incident Communications

How leaders communicate in an incident is an ever-evolving issue. As technology changes create new opportunities and as general preferences point to the need to shift platforms and procedures to more effectively communicate with critical individuals and groups, venue leaders need to consider how social media can be effectively integrated into incident communications.

• One example where social media has been leveraged for incident communications has been through notification and/ or alerting. During several active shooter events where victims communicated through Twitter advising both law enforcement and the social media community that an event was occurring, posting videos advising of the location of the incident and other incident details.
• Law enforcement professionals also leverage social media to communicate and provide status on impactful events to community members and the media.
• Being made aware and managing a natural disaster allows for private sector to better posture resources as well as business continuity preparedness.

The above addresses just some of the ways social media is increasingly relevant to venue safety, security, and incident operations, and there is plenty more that could be shared about all the above areas, as well as how social media can be used to maintain awareness of specific security concerns, individuals, cyber threats, and how it can be used for team coordination, and more. Social media has become a primary means to communicate with younger generations and will continue to become an increasingly important source for information. As technology continues to enhance and grow so will be the way we communicate within social media – an increasingly important consideration for venue leaders and security teams. So, go on, setup your account, and if you’re not sure where to start, connect and follow IAVM!