Thought Pieces & Reference Guides

Standalone writing on risk intelligence and security operations.

Everything here is free. A few just need a quick email to unlock.

The Strategic Risk Intelligence Gap

Why most companies lack the capability to translate geopolitical risk into business decisions, and why that gap is becoming a career opportunity. Download →

The Analysis Deficit

Why identifying threats isn't the same as understanding them, a case for structural risk analysis over reactive threat detection. Download →

Part 1 of 3

Enterprise Risk Was Built Within a Constraint That's Lifting

Why enterprise risk integration has stalled for a generation, and the structural constraint behind it. Download →

Part 2 of 3

One Constraint Lifts. Another Endures.

AI is closing the old constraint, but a deeper one, organizational architecture, remains. Download →

Part 3 of 3

What It Takes to Lift the Enduring Constraint

What the new synthesis function must be capable of, and what the organization has to provide. Download →

The GSOC Is an Enterprise Asset. Many Companies Still Use It Like a Guard Shack.

The reality could be that your best threat intel function isn't talking to anyone.

When Salience Leads Instead of Risk

The security programs that build their case on data, continuously, don't ride the ebb and flow. The ones that wait for headlines do.

Why Don't You Trust Me?

What the data says about the C-suite's trust gap in risk reporting, and why the fix lives one layer beneath the page, not on it.

Finding the Analyst in the Guard Force

As AI absorbs routine guarding work, a new analyst tier is opening beneath it. The question is whether organizations build the pathway to it.

Intelligence Brief Production Cycle

An analyst field reference covering the full production cycle in one place, in sequence, for entry-level analysts and seasoned pros alike.

Protective Threat Intel Maturity Model: One-Page Primer

The three determinants and four-level maturity model, distilled to one page. See the full reference below for the complete framework.

Travel Risk Management Maturity Model: One-Page Primer

The three determinants and four-level maturity model for TRM programs, distilled to one page. See the full reference below for the complete framework.

Nobody's Job. How Do We Measure What Isn't Tracked?

The country has plenty of data about disasters and the economy. What it doesn't have is anyone whose job is to add it up.

Applied Work

Case studies from the field.

A sample of past intelligence and risk assessment projects, not a complete record, but a working sense of the range and depth involved.

Interactive · Climate Vulnerability

CVI Driver Explorer: From an Impossibly Complex Problem to the Factors That Matter

An interactive 3D map of the U.S. Climate Vulnerability Index: 37 vulnerability factors and how they move together across 73,057 census tracts. It opens on the full, tangled picture, then narrows to the ten factors most elevated at each vulnerability level as you move the slider. Built as an example of embracing complexity through data and method to arrive at strategy that is simpler to act on. The same approach applied to an organization's own footprint is the case study below.

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Companion Document · CVI Driver Explorer

CVI Driver Explorer: Overview

What the explorer is, what it does not do, how it can supplement the Climate Vulnerability Index, and how an organization can use it. Includes the limits of the method: the relationships shown are correlations across census tracts, not proven causes.

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Applied Project · Threat Intelligence & Risk Assessment

Climate Vulnerability Assessment: Mapping Organizational Exposure Across a Physical Footprint

Applied the Climate Vulnerability Index, nearly 200 cross-cutting climate and socio-economic indicators covering every U.S. county and over 70,000 census tracts, against an organization's site location data to produce a ranked view of exposure across roughly 400 physical locations, with direct implications for continuity and workforce planning.

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Applied Project · Supply Chain Warning Intelligence

Warning Intelligence: Mapping Supplier Risk Across a Global Network

When armed conflict in Sudan disrupted exports of gum arabic, a raw ingredient with no easy substitute in food and beverage production and one where Sudan is the world's largest exporter, this became a direct line to production risk for a client whose supply chain depended on it. Mapping the full supplier network, not just tier-one vendors, made it possible to identify the single point of failure before it failed.

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Applied Project · Geopolitical & Security Forecasting

Forecasting Intelligence: Scenario Planning Ahead of the Russia-Ukraine War

In spring 2021, a client in the energy sector with a major presence in Ukraine needed to move beyond headlines and reach a working understanding of how likely different outcomes were. Five scenarios were built, each with trackable indicators and a corresponding decision matrix, giving senior leaders a way to cut through uncertainty and act on the signals that mattered as the situation evolved toward the escalation in February 2022.

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