Event Security Is Emergency Management in Disguise
When most people hear the term event security, they immediately picture armed guards, uniformed officers, or staff breaking up fights and managing alcohol related incidents. That narrow perception fundamentally misses what event security truly is and what it must be. As practitioners, we have a responsibility to broaden that understanding and elevate the conversation around what effective event security actually means.
From a holistic standpoint, event security is far more than a physical security presence. While physical security is certainly one component, true event security requires planning with the assumption that any event has the potential to become an incident. This is why event action plans should mirror incident action plans. When an event action plan is pulled, a planner should immediately know where resources, command, communications, and response capabilities are located, just as they would during the first twelve to twenty four hours of an incident response. If an event escalates, the transition should be seamless rather than reactive.
Planning for the Incident That Has Not Happened Yet
Effective event security planning extends across multiple disciplines. It includes ensuring adequate medical coverage through paramedics and emergency medical services, sufficient law enforcement staffing, properly placed physical security barriers, and safe crowd density aligned with venue capacity. It requires coordination with fire officials to ensure compliance with fire codes, clearly marked and accessible emergency exits, unobstructed aisles, and appropriate life safety measures.
It also includes guest services. Crowd flow, wayfinding, seating assistance, and trained staff presence all play a direct role in preventing conditions that lead to emergencies. Many incidents are not caused by malicious intent but by unmanaged movement, congestion, or confusion. Addressing those risks is security, even if it does not look like security in the traditional sense.
Event Security Is Applied Emergency Management
In practice, event security is emergency management applied to a specific time, place, and population. A competent event security planner must think like an emergency manager and approach events through a full cycle lens that includes preparedness, response, and recovery.
Preparedness means realistic planning, staffing, and coordination before the first attendee arrives. Response means having a command structure, communications plan, and operational flexibility when conditions change. Recovery means conducting after action reviews, documenting lessons learned, and making adjustments before the next event. Without that final step, mistakes repeat quietly until they surface during a crisis.
Where Disciplines Converge Under Pressure
This interdisciplinary mindset becomes even more critical during VIP or high profile appearances. Whether the presence involves a governor, elected official, or other public figure, the separation between physical security and emergency management disappears quickly under pressure.
Physical security practitioners must understand emergency management principles such as unified command, resource coordination, and contingency planning. Emergency management professionals must understand physical security realities including access control, perimeter design, and protective operations. When either side lacks fluency in the other, gaps emerge exactly where risk concentrates.
Security Is the Label, Safety Is the Mission
Ultimately, security is simply the label we assign to the function. In practice, event security is comprehensive safety planning rooted in emergency management principles. Its purpose is not enforcement alone. It is protection, coordination, and readiness.
When something goes wrong, and eventually something will, success is measured by how quickly teams adapt, communicate, and stabilize conditions. That outcome is not accidental. It is the result of deliberate planning that treats events not as isolated gatherings but as potential incidents managed proactively.
Event security done well does not draw attention to itself. It creates environments where people can gather safely, incidents are managed decisively, and transitions from normal operations to emergency response are controlled rather than chaotic.
That is not just security. That is preparedness in action.
-
Isaiah La Masters is a public safety and emergency management professional with extensive experience in physical security, critical infrastructure protection, and large-scale emergency preparedness. He is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Red Slice Group, LLC, and has served in multiple roles supporting emergency coordination, training, and exercise at the state and local levels. Isaiah holds an Associate of Arts in Liberal Arts and Political Science, a Bachelor of Science in Homeland Security and Emergency Management, and is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Public Safety—Homeland Security at Liberty University. Passionate about leadership and organizational resilience, he is committed to strengthening collaboration between agencies, responders, and communities to build a safer, more resilient world.
Red Slice Group maintains a free security assessment tool available at https://www.redslicegroup.com/free-assessment. The assessment is designed to support planning, advance work, and general situational awareness by providing structured questions and real time contextual inputs. The tool operates entirely on the client side. All data queries occur locally within the user’s browser and no data is stored, recorded, tracked, or transmitted by or to Red Slice Group. The assessment is intentionally under continuous improvement as conditions, risks, and best practices evolve. Feedback from practitioners and users is welcome and helps inform future updates. The tool is intended as a practical resource to support security thinking and discussion. It is not a replacement for formal risk or vulnerability assessments, professional education or training, operational judgment, site specific verification, or independent fact checking of locations, conditions, or capabilities.
