Alberta firms doing business overseas may not feel like The Great Satan, but that doesn't mean they're immune to terrorist attacks.

"If your firm is in the oil industry, or provides transit for companies in that sector, you remember that oil is considered the lifeblood of the U.S., it's why they're in the Middle East," Larry Riddle, a former U.S. soldier and president of the Centaur Group Inc., told Calgary members of Financial Executives International in a speech last week.

"You can easily find yourself the victim of a terrorist attack for that very reason."

Phoenix-based Centaur Group is a security firm that provides companies with the means of identifying and avoiding the risk before a terror strike, and minimizing their appeal as targets.

Riddle said contrary to popular belief, most terrorist attacks in the past several years have not targeted the military or government sectors, but commercial interests. According to U.S. government data collected between 1998-2003, 63 per cent of terrorist actions around the world were directed against business targets.

The same statistics show that bombings remain the preferred method of attacks, accounting for almost two-thirds of terrorist actions - something that should worry businesspeople who travel in political hotspots because of their indiscriminate nature, Riddle said.

Armed assault-type actions represent about 25 per cent of attacks, while kidnappings, which remain low at seven per cent, have become much more prevalent in the past year or so, as has been demonstrated in Iraq, Riddle added.

"(Kidnapping) is really not terrorism for the sake of instilling fear; it really is a measure of extortion," he said, adding that even though the U.S. and other governments claim publicly that they don't bargain with terrorists, they will often use other countries or organizations to negotiate.

Latin America - headed by Colombia - is a leading region for kidnappings, and "any high-level executive or company that is going to operate in those regions are going to carry some form of kidnap insurance."

Riddle said there are three main kinds of threats western businesspeople must watch out for:

* Victim by location - essentially being at the wrong place at the wrong time;

* Victim by association - if the firm does business with a person, company or government that is a target, it can easily find itself marked by terrorist groups;

* Target of opportunity - many western businesspeople stand out when travelling abroad, and few terrorists distinguish between who is American, Canadian or European.

Among the measures to counter these threats, Riddle urges his clients to: Establish a security plan, analyse potential threats, assess and reduce vulnerability, raise awareness among all employees, have a contingency plan, and continually evaluate the threat levels.

Riddle spent 18 years in the U.S. army and has served on assignments throughout the Far East, Europe and Central Asia, as well as on operations in the Balkans and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, where he participated in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Upon returning to the U.S. and civilian life at the beginning of 2004, Riddle was approached by friends in the business sector seeking his expertise on security measures in the world's trouble spots.

"So, I started bringing in some veterans I knew with specific skillsets to do work on special jobs. One thing led to another, and next thing we knew, we started the Centaur Group."

Given the world's geopolitical climate, business is brisk.

But that doesn't mean that executives are rushing out to develop anti-terrorist security programs.

"Is it an easy sell? Hell, no," Riddle told Business Edge. "Because - and this is particularly evident here in Canada, and even the U.S. - people don't see terrorism as big a threat as a few years ago. Even people who were affected (by 9/11) in the U.S. have forgotten and are back to business as usual."

Unlike many security firms working internationally, Centaur doesn't provide armed guards or other security personnel, due in large part to the fact that the margins are too narrow for the amount of work involved in that enterprise. Instead, the company gets the "best bang for the buck" by working with business to leverage security programs already in place.

"What I like to do is to train the guards who are there already to make them more effective."

He said that while some firms do an excellent job of protecting their people and assets, others - including some Alberta-based companies - argue that they simply don't have the budget for it.

"I've talked to firms here and abroad they're like, 'Our budget is X, and X only allows us to do this,' and really they don't see that as a big concern.

"What we try to do is educate our customers to say: 'Hey, what is the threat?' And maybe the threat isn't that pressing and they can get away with X. But if we come back with a threat assessment that says 'You've got a problem here you have to pay attention to,' it's really up to the organization to decide what to do. We just present them with our view."

Web watch:
www.centaurgroupinc.com

(John Ludwick can be reached at ludwick@businessedge.ca)