A year of social and political unrest that has resulted in high-profile incidents like the assassinations of both UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conservative commentator Charlie Kirk — along with day-to-day disgruntlement among everyone from political protesters to those involved in government hearings to unhappy emergency room patients — has ramped up the challenges facing the security industry in 2025.

But both third-party guarding companies and institutions across the gamut of societal sectors has hardened and honed their security posture, with training on how to respond to potentially violent situations — ideally through de-escalation — as well as new technologies, some of them AI-enabled, that help them to do so. And a few years after the “Great Resignation” led to a very tight labor market, hiring and retention challenges seem to have eased.

With more than 300,000 employees in 377 offices and revenues of more than $13.2 billion in North America, Allied Universal sounded the alarm on a major escalation in threats against U.S. executives in its 2025 World Security Report.

The firm’s research found that nearly half (46%) of U.S.-based chief security officers (CSO) have experienced greater threats against their executives over the past two years, with technology and pharmaceutical companies the most likely to provide executive protection for senior leaders — both at 40% compared to the national average of 33%.

In addition, Allied Universal’s annual report found that economic instability is the most concerning hazard for the coming year, with 44% of the 2,350 chief security officers who responded citing that threat, up from 33% in 2024. And 64% of U.S. security heads expect budget increases for physical security, with employee security training and upskilling the most common top priority, mentioned by nearly half of them (46%).

“We are in a different security environment in the past 12 to 18 months, with this acceleration of economic instability, social instability and protests, and all this kind of activity,” says Rachelle Loyear, Vice President of Integrated Security Solutions at Allied Universal. “We are seeing greater demands placed on the people who stand on the actual front line,” with 83% of CSOs who responded to the survey agreeing with that statement.

Allied Universal and its clients are working together to combat these threats with barriers and perimeter control, an officer training regimen focused on de-escalation when faced with “people who have very heated ideas,” and technological advancements such as the use of AI in video analytics to catch unwanted behaviors and trigger alerts, Loyear says. A potential bad actor can be issued an automated warning that they’re on camera and given a chance to disperse before a human guard confronts them, she explains.

With 95,000 employees in 180 offices and revenue of $3.3 billion in North America, GardaWorld Security — U.S. has focused on hiring and retention through its “ambassador” program over the past year, reducing turnover among security professionals year-over-year, says Ally Happel, Senior Vice President, sales for GardaWorld Security - U.S. The company has leveraged technology to help with training, launching a new learning management system that uses AI to help with simulations.

Companies are less focused on cost savings than they were immediately post-COVID and more on security optimization, building out stronger resiliency and emergency plans in the wake of political unrest, Happel says. “Do we have the right training posture?” she says. “Do we have individuals on the ground with the right soft skills? It’s no longer just, ‘Does this person meet the job description based on their qualifications.”

Christopher Brooks, Chief Operating Officer of ECAM, a GardaWorld company specializing in live surveillance and AI-enabled security, says customers are heavily focused on how best to integrate guarding and technology to achieve a more powerful security posture. And they’re very curious about — but also wary of — artificial intelligence. “What tools can I use and not use?” he says. “There aren’t a lot of off-the-shelf products that are AI, specific to remote video monitoring. That’s a key gap that ECAM fills for our customers.”

But AI is proving quite useful in sub-optimal conditions like darkness or bad weather to “quiet the noise” and help those monitoring camera systems, for example, see movement where it’s not supposed to be, Brooks says. “It’s allowed me to see more clearly what I need to see, when I need to see it,” he says, adding that ECAM’s proprietary technologies have led to an increase in apprehension and arrests.

The company’s “Blackout” AI technology on its more than 140,000 cameras detects threats faster than the human eye, often in under a second, says Alex Vourkoutiotis, Chief Technology Officer at ECAM. “This allows for immediate intervention — such as a guard or law enforcement response, or verbal broadcast warning. It has even prevented loss of life in several documented cases,” he says. In addition, ECAM’s “Integra” AI-powered video technology increases detection accuracy by up to 40% and identification range up to 50%, he adds.

Multinational Posture

With guards stationed all over the globe, sometimes in remote and/or risky conditions, ADM has worked to automate guarding posts where possible, while being mindful that they’re not “losing touch” with the overall security posture, says Brian Howell, Vice President and Global Head of Security. He’d like to “in-source” key positions in the guard force to ensure greater cultural integration, given “enormous turnover in the guarding world. They’re in a constant train and re-train situation,” he says. “Training programs that might have been more embedded in a legacy workforce, you have to be more deliberate in making that available to staff.”

ADM has added a new senior role charged with technology integration, which Howell sees as critical given the return-on-investment that can be attached to new technology — but also given potential missed opportunities if that tech doesn’t work as well as planned. “It’s a bad analogy, but I want to make sure we end up with VHS and not Betamax in everything that’s new,” he says. Otherwise, “you go through training, you go through installation, and you’re going to have to live with it throughout that lifecycle.”

With operations in hotspots like Ukraine and Israel, ADM needs to have action plans in place, outsourced partners lined up, top-shelf intelligence monitoring and more than enough security staff, Howell says. He believes the worldwide instability created by the COVID-19 pandemic has “stretched and challenged” security departments in a good way, to make them prepared for other “out of left field type of stuff.” As travel has ramped up the past few years, he adds, “Maybe that instability has made us less willing to trust that everything will be all right.”

“Doing More With Less” in the Public Sector

At the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C., Chief Security Officer Raymond Hankins contracts through the Federal Protective Service of the Department of Homeland Security to staff the headquarters building as well as more than 50 locations nationwide. The NLRB is currently “doing more with less” given budget cuts, which has led to an increase in agitation among those with matters before the board, Hankins says.

“Folks get upset more frequently because the service is not what they’re accustomed to,” he says. “When those things occur, our agents have to be able to reassure the person that they’re doing the best they can for them and manage expectations.” New employees who start at the office receive training on how to handle a disgruntled party and summon help, if need be, he adds, while the board also has threat detection technology, electronic access cards, an alarm system, and antiterrorism measures in place to combat potential threats.

Those measures are all “useful when you have someone who is a belligerent party,” he says. “In each location, we have hearings, and the judge has procedures to follow in case things go awry in a courtroom. … There has been an uptick in individuals coming to federal buildings and airports with prohibited items. That’s where threat detection technology is key. Metal detectors, walk-through magnetometers and X-ray machines all help us to shield employees from someone who may be caught up in emotion and not thinking clearly.”

It’s a bad analogy, but I want to make sure we end up with VHS and not Betamax in everything that’s new. [Otherwise] you go through training, you go through installation, and you’re going to have to live with it throughout that lifecycle.

Staying Safe in Healthcare

The shooting of Thompson has both made healthcare institutions more uneasy and led to a wave of at least pretend copycats targeting Ballad Health, based in Johnson City, Tennessee, according to Ken Harr, Assistant Vice President and Chief Security Officer. “We’ve had several incidents of people emailing, ‘Hope you die,’ or ‘you should die,’” he says. “Which caused us to take a stronger security stance for our executives.”

The healthcare provider has 150 armed security officers, all employees, and Harr has been working with human resources to boost their pay to help retain them, so fewer leave for law enforcement. In addition, Ballad has rolled out body cameras for all officers. “They do a great job of capturing what is actually being done, instead of… sometimes people like to exaggerate and say, ‘Security said this to me. Security did this to me,’” he says. “It’s been a great tool for our risk managers to go back and look at, when an incident occurs, to validate [or not].”

Lastly, the healthcare provider has plans to roll out weapons detection and visitor management badging systems, and it’s added K9 teams at tertiary facilities. “Sometimes people become upset inside a hospital, and the last thing we need is someone angry with a weapon,” Harr adds. “The K9 teams have been extremely effective in helping to reduce workplace violence incidents, particularly in our emergency departments.”

Northwell Health, in the New York City region, primarily contracts out for its 1,000 or so guards at 28 facilities, providing training for active shooter, de-escalation and domestic violence awareness to combat the explosion of workplace violence in healthcare, says Kenneth Solosky, Director of Corporate Security Training. In 2018, the healthcare provider armed about one-quarter of its force, and it’s implemented weapons detection and visitor management systems.

The domestic violence awareness came about because with more than 100,000 employees, “We’re not immune to the ills of society,” he says, and sometimes those ills show up at the workplace. “It’s a fine line. If you know an employee is suffering, they have every right to tell us, mind your business, and we recognize that. But we wanted to have a mechanism in place [for a domestic violence victim] to say, ‘I need help.’”

Northwell has more than 5,000 cameras systemwide and could introduce artificial intelligence in the near future, among other reasons to help with facial recognition, Solosky says. The corporate office has a drone program that provides pictures and other surveillance of particular sites, or just a presence as needed, he says.

Polarization in Higher Education

Since arriving at American University after spending 13 years down the road at Georgetown, Jay Gruber, Assistant Vice President and Chief of Police, has been developing a robust threat assessment program to broaden the university’s posture from mainly student-focused to include staff, faculty and people not affiliated with the university, providing regular meetings and training to raise awareness of and elevate response to both internal and external threats.

While there’s no specific concerns that have arisen lately, “When certain things happen in society, say the Charlie Kirk shooting, for example, there’s always people who express opinions on either side of the incident, and sometimes there are polarizing statements made by members of the American University community,” he says. “Then you get a lot of feedback, as I would call it, from the public, who were unhappy by what was said. Depending on their unhappiness, we have to take those things seriously. … If someone says, ‘I’m going to come to campus and find you, and tell you what I think in person,’ that I have to take as a threat.”

Gruber’s force is comprised of 100% university employees, campus special police officer commissioned by the Washington Metropolitan Police Department to have the same powers, and the school has been reasonably successful in recruiting and training people. “It’s never easy in our industry, especially since George Floyd, to hire people interested in this profession, and even harder to retain them,” he says. “Hopefully, we’re rounding a corner where it’s not as bad as it’s been” for the past five years.

The school’s camera and video management system does not have analytics, which makes it labor-intensive to examine footage, and Gruber is researching upgrading that, potentially to include analytics, as well as standardizing the cameras down to a single manufacturer.

“We’re here to return students to their parents after four years in the same shape as they left them,” he says. “When I started in police work, there was no social media. You didn’t have cell phones. You have to adapt in how you get information, and how you process information, and how you use that information. … You have to change the way you do things to accomplish the same goal.”

Entertainment and Sports Security: Not All Fun and Games

Las Vegas-based Caesars Entertainment has revamped a couple different aspects of its security stance in 2025, according to Eric Golebiewski, Senior Vice President of Corporate Security. The organization has expanded its use of the Titan HST mass communication system among its team members spread across its 55 North American properties and equipped team members working isolated areas of resorts in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and Virginia with Titan HST panic buttons that security alerts dispatch and provides their location, he says. The system also can build chat groups among those working security at a particular entertainment event, including with third-party teams contracted there in the venues, to push out relevant information.

Secondly, Caesars contracted with body camera company Axon to bolster the organization’s 20,000 stationary surveillance cameras in Las Vegas and provide audio to give transparency and context to various incidents that might take place, Golebiewski says. “It captures the emotion of the event,” he says. “You hear what that person is saying, and you get a unique perspective of what that [guard] is encountering and responding to.” And agitated patrons tend to deescalate once they realize they’re being recorded, he adds. Plus, the camera also uploads the video to an encrypted, secure site in case it’s needed for litigation or criminal prosecution.

Caesars also has partnered with Street Smarts VR around a virtual reality training system that helps the armed special response team learn judgment and decision-making in use of force situations and in de-escalation scenarios, Golebiewski says. Guards can virtually learn when to use — and when not to use — pepper spray, handcuffs, batons, tasers and firearms in scenarios developed realistic to the environment in which they will be working, such as hotel rooms or casino floors, he says.

As Manager of Safety & Security for the Atlanta Hawks, a position she left recently, LaTonya O’Neal says she and her staff, who handled back-of-house security for the team, musicians playing concerts and site staff, were always on the alert for anything out of the ordinary, in their downtown Atlanta location.

“There are individuals experiencing homelessness in the surrounding area,” she says. “Our focus was on ensuring that no one was loitering or attempting to gain unauthorized access to the arena. We maintained continuous, 24/7 monitoring of the entire property.”

Hiring and retention can be challenging in a sports and entertainment arena because the job can feel repetitive when no concerts or games are taking place, O’Neal says, and she implemented recognition programs keep the team engaged motivated. Social and political turbulence didn’t have any major impacts despite the central location. “We frequently managed various protests and demonstrations around the arena,” she says. “Whether our officers were stationed on foot or monitoring through cameras, our priority was ensuring the protection and security of the facility.”