Applying DEFCON and the Homeland Security Advisory System in organisational risk management

Abstract

Many businesses face avoidable strategic and external risks that can be addressed by accepting, relocating, reducing, or eliminating them. Companies of all sizes should predict and prepare for the risks that come with doing business. When a scenario becomes a reality, a well-prepared organisation can mitigate sales, lost time and productivity, and negative impact on customers. They can assist in the safety of an organisation and its employees by offering a fully integrated threat management system that offers real-time threat impact assessments that the corporation can use to fulfil its duty of care obligations and keep employees safe. These systems are based on robust systems such as DEFCON, HSAS, and NTAS. In analogy to the application in Military and Anti-Terrorism, the systems DEFCON, HSAS or NTAS to the specific application, define the comprehensive explanations and define corresponding actions at each threat level. This article deals with the question, if the deployment of DEFCON, HSAS/NTAS is a suitable approach to meet the requirements of the ISO 9001:2015. To answer the given research-question the method of qualitative content analysis was used as outlined by Mayring. Six main codes and twelve subcodes were defined inductively and deductively, and the present literature was encoded according to the method of structured content analysis. To this end, 765 codings were carried out and then analysed in the context of the research questions. As a result, the research question was confirmed by the present study.