From Risk to Response: Security Leadership in the Age of High Velocity Disruptions

There’s a critical shift happening in the world of security. It’s not just about knowing when something goes wrong. It’s about how fast you can connect the dots, make a decision, and get the right people moving. Threats don’t wait. Neither can we.

The risks security leaders face today are more complex, more connected, and faster-moving than anything we’ve seen before. A cyberattack doesn’t just take down servers anymore. It disrupts physical operations, exposes employee data, and creates downstream impacts for weeks. An active assailant threat can ripple across multiple locations and trigger overlapping law enforcement responses. Supply chain disruptions, civil unrest, insider threats: all of them can create chaos if they aren’t handled quickly, with precision.

Too often, organizations are still stuck in awareness mode. They know something is happening, but the next step – who’s impacted, what to do, and how to coordinate – gets lost in the noise. That delay is where risk turns into damage.

This is where a high-velocity approach to critical event management comes in. It’s not just about adopting new tools. It’s about rethinking how we respond to disruption. This approach is built around one goal: moving from insight to action, fast. It combines focused intelligence, automation, and streamlined communication to help teams act with clarity.

AI can play a big role here, especially when it’s built for these specific use cases. It’s not about generic AI that spits out dashboards. It’s about getting the right context: location-specific threats, who’s affected, and what’s needed next. The value is in helping teams filter out noise and focus on what matters. The faster that happens, the faster you protect your people and operations.

I’ve seen firsthand how this changes the game. A threat is identified. The right team is alerted. Response protocols are triggered based on real-time data. And the organization stays ahead of the disruption.

But technology alone isn’t enough. Security resilience starts with leadership. It starts with the decision to break down silos and create real-time coordination between security, continuity, operations, and executive teams. It starts with testing those connections before a real event hits. And it continues with refining those playbooks after every incident.

We use a simple framework: know what’s happening, respond effectively, and improve after every event. The truth is you can’t respond well to something you don’t fully understand. You also can’t improve without honest reflection. That’s what resilience looks like at scale.

We’re living in an age of high velocity disruptions. Security teams can’t rely on reactive strategies or fragmented tools. They need clarity. They need speed. They need systems to make it easy to move from insight to action.

If you’re a security leader, the question isn’t whether you’ll face these disruptions. The question is how fast you can move when they hit. The answer starts with leadership. But it only works when it’s backed by the right tools, the right mindset, and the right partners.

It’s time to build that readiness now, before the next disruption arrives.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pamela Larson

Pamela Larson is the chief security officer for North America at Everbridge, where she leads strategy and execution across physical and digital security operations. With more than two decades of experience in enterprise security, risk management, and crisis response, she has worked closely with Fortune 500 companies and public sector agencies to strengthen organizational resilience. Larson brings a direct, operational mindset to security leadership, focused on readiness, coordination, and staying ahead of high-impact threats.