As international travel ramps up again, security teams are increasingly tasked with assessing risks for travellers. Intelligence Analyst Carl-Johan Carlstedt outlines five critical travel risks that are frequently overlooked – but which can impact your people’s safety and security.
After three long years, the last major travel restrictions in China were unceremoniously dropped on 15 March. The era of truly mass global travel is returning.
Many executives are already reconnecting with overseas staff in person, visiting offices and manufacturing sites across the globe as well as attending conferences. But the geopolitical and security landscape conditions have shifted enormously since restrictions were first placed in 2020. With many businesses and organisations planning travel over the year ahead, many of our clients have come to us to get a better understanding of how regions, countries and cities have changed.
If you’re like most regional security teams, you too may be updating your assessments for crime, terrorism and protest in the cities your executives are planning to visit. But before your travellers dust-off that well-thumbed passport, we would like to highlight a handful of often overlooked, but critical travel risks that you and your team may want to consider before your company books trips.
1. Overflight risk
Air travel is generally safe, but the dangers of flying over conflict zones were tragically highlighted in 2014 when a commercial flight was shot down over Ukraine. The risk is even more pronounced in areas where there are heightened tensions but no active conflict, or where the risk is liable to rise quickly with little notice, such as Israel/Gaza, Nagorno-Karabakh, Taiwan, the South China Sea, Sudan, DRC or Mali. For example, this has led to a Ukrainian plane being shot down over Tehran in January 2020.
And following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, global flight routes have probably changed for the long-term, with some air carriers reviving flight routes that were long thought of as relics of the Cold War.
Overflight risk is often a gap for many teams in their risk assessments. As we saw recently in Sudan, interstate or civil conflicts that pose a risk to commercial flights can erupt suddenly and with very little notice. It is therefore essential to stay informed and remain vigilant of how security developments on the ground can rapidly change your risk assessments – even in regions outside your traveller’s primary destination.
2. State agencies and personal cyber risk
A foreign government’s approach to law and order can be quite different to the one travellers and risk managers may be used to back home. Their tools might include arbitrary detention, exit bans and snap inspections of electronic devices and baggage.
Yet the risks from foreign state agencies are often overlooked, particularly in less obvious places like Central America, Egypt and others. Often this is because information on their activities are often hard to come by and are by their nature organisationally opaque. Although these are high-impact, low-frequency events, they are also some of the most difficult to predict.
For business travellers, the risk emanating from state agencies is especially heightened in places such as China. And in light of deteriorating US-China relations this is expected to worsen. This is because businesses may hold sensitive data, trade secrets or have dealings with government officials, which can attract the attention of domestic security services. Coupled with a worsening geopolitical backdrop between China and the West, this can elicit a range of responses from local and national level authorities including physical surveillance, data compromise and electronic surveillance to exit bans or arbitrary detention.
And without transparent legal systems and rule of law, organisations could have their local operating licences revoked and individuals can be arrested and held without trial, often for long periods of time, without any clear reason, fair trial or justification.
3. Overland travel and infrastructure risk
Many businesses that have set their sights on shifting their supply chains to Southeast Asia may be unaware of the immediate challenges of travel within countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia. In many capital cities across southeast Asia, poor or underdeveloped infrastructure means that disruptions are common for long-term residents of the city.
But for business travellers with brief stopovers, this can mean disruptions lasting several hours to several days, impacting even the best-laid plans.
For example, road safety risks in many parts of the world including in Southeast Asia are heightened with heavy traffic and poor road standards, leading to ongoing challenges getting around cities and reaching manufacturing sites. Persistent flooding in many cities can often lead to recurring delays getting around; underdeveloped or poorly maintained roads can make it challenging to get to and from the airport on time.
How Dragonfly helps with travel risk assessments
If you want to ensure that your travel risk assessments are both up-to-date and anticipatory, Dragonfly makes it easy for you.
Our Security Intelligence and Analysis Service (SIAS) includes risk maps covering 24 risk typologies. This includes state agencies, personal cyber risk, overland travel and infrastructure; as well as LGBTQ+ discrimination, medical and public health, domestic movement restrictions and more.
Our risk ratings have clearly defined methodology and are updated regularly, making them easy to use as the basis for in-house assessments or as a launchpad to begin considering risks faced by your travellers.
And if you want to delve deeper into the issues in a specific country, you can consult our Country Dossiers, which collect all relevant SIAS intelligence on each state in one convenient place. The dossiers also summarise the main risks and key issues for travellers.
SIAS subscribers can also contact our analysts to ask follow-up questions directly. We often receive requests from clients who have been asked to provide assessments of locations for which they have no experience, including in challenging risk environments such as Afghanistan, Algeria, Sudan and Indonesia.
Our analysts can support your understanding of local security dynamics, not only drawing on our risk ratings but on their on-the-ground experiences, extensive human source networks and expertise. When necessary, we can also consult our networks of international sources based in the public and private sectors, to provide further details about government travel advisories and give timely and accurate updates to clients travelling all across the globe.
Case study: Bank security team proactively anticipates risks to travellers
Take one of our clients, a global bank with a large number of international travellers.
The client has a well-equipped security team, with its own GSOC and multiple intelligence providers. However, when assessing the safety of travel arrangements, the bank relied heavily on incident alerts and its regional security managers, and the CSO was concerned that regional managers had a different risk tolerance to the broader organisation.
The bank subscribed to Dragonfly’s SIAS platform, receiving access to approximately 80 anticipatory intelligence reports each month, as well as our full risk ratings and risk maps. Additionally, they frequently spoke to our analysts months in advance about their travellers’ destinations.
This has allowed the security team to take on a more strategic role within the organisation and plan ahead, rather than constantly ‘fighting fires’. They are able to see any potential issues at a glance, by consulting risk ratings and forecasts that are underpinned by clear methodology with no bias. And they are able to sense-check their regional managers’ security assessments, adding another layer of confidence to their judgements.
To find out more about SIAS and how it can help you manage travel risks, please get in touch with our specialists today.
Image: Airline Crisis with flight cancelled due to corona virus via Getty Images.
