BY JOEL GRIFFIN, SecurityInfoWatch:
One of the most critical but often misunderstood aspects of any large corporate risk mitigation strategy is executive protection.
High-level executives often serve as the public face of their respective organizations, thus making them a target of scorn and even physical intimidation.
Find out how YOU can become Certified Protection Officer with the IFPO!
But while many people think of executive protection professionals as simply musclebound bodyguards who shepherd high-profile individuals from one place to another, the reality is that it takes a lot more than a physically imposing frame and a firearm to be able to adequately protect someone and their family.
No one knows this fact better than AS Solution’s Christian West and Brian Jantzen, co-authors of the new book, Corporate Executive Protection: An Introduction for Corporations and Security Professionals.
West, who is the founder and CEO of AS Solution, says they were motivated to write the book to provide a roadmap for organizations to actually establish their own executive protection programs because the majority of what has been written on the topic to this point has focused on the tactical aspects of the job – conducting sweeps, defensive driving techniques, etc.
“It is somewhat of a jungle or labyrinth or whatever you want to call it to start one of these teams, so one day Brian and I looked at all of these notes that we had compiled over the years – we personally have been involved in building almost 40 programs around the world for various clients some of which have ran for 20 years which is really, really long in executive protection years – and we had a lot of information that we wanted to share,” West explains.
Jantzen, executive vice president at AS Solution, says they also noticed an information gap in the industry on the practitioner side with regards to career progression.
“Our goal is to transform the executive protection industry into a recognized professional service and then also provide career pathing for people so that they have the same kind of career opportunities that we’ve had,” he says. “Looking at all of these different programs and helping to start them or fix them really inspired us to want to share that information and not only grow the business but grow the industry.”
Unlike many of his contemporaries who got their start in the profession by way of either a military or law enforcement background, West started his career in security as a nightclub bouncer in his home country of Denmark. He later met a pair of Danish music producers that had landed a multi-million dollar contract in Los Angeles and needed someone to head up their security operations.
“I started out not knowing anything and learning from my mistakes – and there were plenty of those,” West says. “As everything grew, I figured out there was a smarter way of doing things and being way more client-centric than most of the competitors.”
After spending seven years in the entertainment industry, West returned to Denmark and started his own firm, which he later sold to Securitas. Having spent some time as special projects manager for Securitas, West struck out on his own again and founded his current firm, AS Solution.
