David Riedman, PhD, Chief Data Officer at Merrill Herzog provides proactive steps to be crisis ready.
As organizations head into 2026, the conversation around “crisis readiness” is no longer hypothetical. Violent incidents motivated by ideology, personal grievance, workplace conflict, and radicalization continue to occur across industries meaning the expectations placed on employers, schools, and public institutions have never been higher.
Crisis readiness today is not just about reacting quickly. It’s about demonstrating that your organization has taken reasonable, proactive, and documented steps to proactively try to stop violence, reduce risk, and manage an incident effectively if one occurs.
For leaders trying to build resilience before an emergency strikes, the best practices across education and industry are outlined and supported by the Merrill Herzog crisis response team in the Protect Safeguard Plus Active Assailant & Workplace Violence Insurance policy provided by Samphire.
1. Start with an Active Assailant Policy
Too many organizations think an “active shooter plan” begins and ends with run-hide-fight posters or mandatory annual training. But an effective Active Assailant policy is actually a crisis management framework that integrates prevention, response, recovery, and continuity of operations.
Samphire’s Active Assailant policy reinforces this by including not just insurance coverage, but structured support for crisis response, expert deployment, threat assessment, and risk mitigation.
It’s important to meet in advance with the crisis management team to review the organization’s facility risks, workforce, operations, vulnerabilities, and culture. This is essential because threat profiles change as organizations grow, staffing fluctuates, or political/social tensions evolve.
The Samphire policy even includes an Onboarding Consultation, allowing organizations to receive a professional review of their violence-prevention program and risk-reduction strategies. This type of consultation is exactly the kind of proactive step courts increasingly expect from employers following a violent incident.
2. Crisis Management Firms Don’t Just Respond
To be proactive in preventing violence before it happens, crisis management services are not limited to immediate emergency response. They also provide post-incident public relations, legal review, and investigative support to help organizations minimize additional impacts and limit exposure.
The Samphire policy explicitly covers:
- Fact-finding and evidence collection
- Post-incident analysis and debrief reports
- Litigation support
- Identification of legal obligations and liabilities
This is a critical point for 2026 because after any workplace violence or active assailant incident, the first questions attorneys and investigators ask are: What did the organization know? What did they do about it? What systems were in place? Were reasonable steps taken?
Documented consultation with a crisis management partner becomes powerful evidence of due diligence and can significantly reduce liability, reputational damage, and regulatory scrutiny.
3. Lessons From Recent High-Profile Incidents
The Charlie Kirk assassination at Utah Valley University, an active shooter targeting NFL executives in New York City, and the recent school shootings in Minneapolis, Denver, Nashville, rural Georgia, and Madison, WI all highlight a pattern leaders need to understand:
a. Threat Escalation Can Be Rapid and Non-Linear
The Minneapolis school shooting and its precursor warning signs show how quickly a non-specific threat can escalate into an attack. This aligns with the policy’s definitions of Threat and Stalking Threat, which emphasize early action, documentation, and immediate notification to the crisis responder.
Organizations must treat all threats—direct, indirect, or implied—as triggers for immediate assessment.
b. Security Decisions Are Evaluated in Hindsight
The Charlie Kirk assassination demonstrated how political events or public-facing gatherings can quickly become targets. In both cases, investigators scrutinized venue security, staffing, access control, and whether preventative guidance had been sought in advance.
This is exactly why integrated active-assailant insurance and crisis management support matter by creating a documented bridge between policy, planning, prevention, and response.
c. Random Violence Targets High Profile Organizations
At 345 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, a man who believed CTE was responsible for the problems in his life, drove across the country with the semi-auto rifle to kill the NFL’s top executives. This man was unknown to the organization and had not made public threats of violence. Despite industry-leading best practices like access control, CCTV, and armed guards in the lobby, a heavily armed assailant committing a surprise attack has the tactical advantage.
When some acts of mass violence are difficult or even impossible to prevent, having insurance coverage can mitigate catastrophic financial losses.
4. Additional Principles for Staying Crisis-Ready in 2026
Preventative and preparedness actions that are supported by the Samphire policy and the Merrill Herzog crisis response team include:
- Schedule a yearly crisis-readiness audit. Use onboarding consultations and follow-up reviews to keep plans current.
- Leverage professional threat assessments. External specialists can evaluate threats objectively, avoiding common internal blind spots.
- Invest in post-incident recovery planning. The policy’s Business Interruption and Personal Accident coverage help mitigate how long and costly recovery can be.
- Develop a transparent communications strategy. Crisis communications support is included in the policy to avoid poor messaging that destroys trust and creates legal exposure.
Crisis readiness in 2026 isn’t optional. Build the plan, meet with the experts, and document everything. You can’t stop every threat but you can control how prepared you are if someone who intends to cause harm shows up at your insured’s property.
About Merrill Herzog
Merrill Herzog is a risk advisory and crisis response firm that helps clients prepare for and defend themselves against security risks, respond to critical and crisis situations, and safeguard commercial interests globally.
In addition to helping clients navigate active assailant incidents, Merrill Herzog also provides the following pre-incident preparation services:
- Risk Assessment
- Safety & Security Audit (access control, surveillance, and communication systems)
- Policy Review and Development
- Training – Run/Hide/Fight, Lifesaving Medical, Awareness including recognizing behavioral indicators, situational awareness, and threat assessments as well as Drills and Exercises (tabletop, full-scale drills, and first responder integration)
For more information, visit merrillherzog.com or email at info@merrillherzog.com.
About McGowan’s Active Shooter/Workplace Violence Insurance
McGowan Programs’ Active Shooter Workplace Violence Program is proud to partner with Samphire/Merrill Herzog and other domestic and international carriers that enable us to offer Active Shooter/Workplace Violence insurance protection to a broad spectrum of organizations including restaurants, bars, houses of worship, hospitals, manufacturing, schools and universities, as well as large event space including stadiums.