Track24 features in Times article

Track24 has recently featured in a Times article which explores the increasing risks facing companies that are involved in emerging global markets.

Companies are increasingly looking for sustainable methods of stand-off security (SSOS) to safeguard their personnel from the risks that are inherent from working in such markets. As a result the use of security tracking and risk management solutions has become an essential tool for companies operating in these regions.

The Times
January 6, 2010

When the job puts your life on the line
Emily Ford

…As the case of Peter Moore, the IT consultant released last week after being held hostage in Iraq for two and a half years demonstrated, it is not only high-profile political targets or VIPs worth millions who are at risk of being abducted, but ordinary executives.

Many companies eager to move into emerging markets send employees into hostile environments, from oil and gas companies exploring the Niger Delta to retail banks setting up in Kosovo. Threats can change almost daily: while the security situation in Colombia has improved dramatically, Venezuela is increasingly unstable, Mr Bullivant says. Meanwhile, the growing telecoms industry in North Africa is having to deal with heightened terrorist activity.

A burgeoning corporate security industry is springing up to meet the demand. Revenues at Track24, a company that provides high-tech panic alarms and satellite tracking devices for corporate executives, governments and NGOs working in hostile environments, have risen steadily over the past six years.

Tim Grant, chief executive of Track24, says: “Companies are globalising, looking for contracts in new places that are often either unfamiliar or there is an element of threat. As an executive, you are an obvious target.”

His clients have encountered extortion, abduction and low level criminality such as theft, a big issue in emerging economies. While companies understand the risks, they often do not know how to deal with them, Mr Grant says. “They hand out a mobile phone and say ‘call in once a day’.” This can prove problematic. Often no one realises that an employee is missing until he or she fails to turn up at the embassy the next day….

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