Your Security Personnel Could Be Your Biggest Operational Risk
If you manage risk in complex environments such as oil, gas or mining, you already know that most major disruptions don’t start with a dramatic incident.
They start small - a strained relationship, a misjudged interaction, a decision on the ground that didn’t quite fit the context, and more often than we care to admit, security teams sit right at the centre of those moments.
This risk isn’t because your security teams are incompetent or ill-intentioned, but because they operate at the sharp end of your business, where corporate policy meets local reality. In that space, behaviour matters as much as procedure.
For many operators, this is still an uncomfortable truth: your security function can quietly become one of your most significant sources of social and operational risk.
Security Teams Are Part of Your Social Licence
We talk a lot about social licence to operate, stakeholder engagement and ESG alignment. But on the ground, communities don’t experience your ESG report - they experience your people.
Security personnel are often the most visible representatives of your company. They manage access, enforce rules and deal with tension when it arises. To a local community member, they are the company. A single heavy-handed interaction at a gate can undo months of careful community engagement. A pattern of dismissive or overly forceful behaviour can shift local perception from “partner” to “threat” surprisingly quickly.
None of this shows up immediately on a risk register. But it surfaces later as complaints, rumours, protests, political pressure or regulatory attention. By the time it reaches the boardroom, the narrative is already shaped.
Seasoned Risk Managers know this dynamic well. The question isn’t whether behaviour influences outcomes — it’s how much visibility you actually have over it.
The Gap Between Policy and Practice
Most operators have solid security policies. Many align with international frameworks and human rights standards. On paper, the systems look robust. Yet incidents still happen. Why? Because policies don’t make decisions — people do.
In high-pressure situations, individuals fall back on instinct, peer norms and local culture. If those influences aren’t aligned with company values, the written procedure becomes secondary.
Common pressure points include:
Responding to informal community gatherings near site boundaries
Managing access disputes tied to local livelihoods or land use
Interpreting “suspicious behaviour” in unfamiliar cultural contexts
Handling frustration after repeated low-level security breaches
None of these are black-and-white scenarios. They require judgement. And judgement is shaped by culture more than by manuals.
That’s where many security models show their limits. They assume compliance equals control. In reality, culture drives conduct.
Culture Is the Operating System
If you strip security back to its fundamentals, it’s a human system. Equipment, technology and procedures support it, but people run it. Culture is the operating system behind those people. It shapes:
How confidently personnel de-escalate
Whether they default to force or dialogue
How they interpret intent
What they consider “acceptable” behaviour
When they feel empowered to exercise discretion
A weak or misaligned security culture doesn’t always look dramatic. Often it looks like inconsistency. Mixed messages. Variable judgement. Small frictions that accumulate.The real risk is cumulative. Communities notice patterns. So do local authorities. So do employees who live nearby. Once trust erodes, every future incident is viewed through a harsher lens.
The Cost of Getting It Wrong
At this level, we’re no longer talking about minor reputational issues. We’re talking about operational resilience.
Security-driven community tensions can lead to: work stoppages or access blockages, escalating protection costs, delayed permits or renewals, and Investor concern tied to ESG performance. None of these happen in isolation. They compound.
And in a sector where margins are already exposed to geopolitical and commodity volatility, avoidable social friction is an unnecessary risk multiplier. The irony is that many of these outcomes originate from behavioural blind spots rather than strategic failures.
Across the extractive sector, delayed or suspended projects: like one copper-gold mine in South America, which was halted amid community protests over water rights, illustrate how operational continuity can hinge on social dynamics just as much as geology or engineering. In that case alone, years of opposition translated into billions of dollars in sunk costs and lost production potential.
An External Consultancy Offers a More Objective View
Security leaders and Risk Managers are often unaware of behavioural risk, because internal audits tend to measure compliance, not lived culture. Incident reports capture outcomes, not underlying drivers. Surveys often reflect what people think leadership wants to hear.
So organisations end up with partial signals rather than a clear picture.
There’s also a natural sensitivity around scrutinising security teams too closely. They operate in difficult environments and deserve support. But support includes giving them the right cultural framework, not just equipment and rules.
This is where an external, behaviour-focused perspective can add real value.
A New Era For A Behavioural Approach to Security Risk
Some operators are starting to treat security culture with the same seriousness as safety culture. That’s a useful comparison.
Two decades ago, safety was largely procedural. Then the industry recognised that culture, mindset and behavioural norms were decisive factors. Safety performance improved when organisations looked beyond checklists.
Security is on a similar journey now.
Forward-thinking companies are asking:
How do our teams actually interpret risk?
What unwritten norms guide behaviour on site?
Do our incentives reinforce the right conduct?
Are we equipping teams to exercise judgement, not just follow orders?
How is our security presence perceived externally?
These aren’t theoretical questions. They’re operational ones.
Here’s Where Omnio Fits In
This is precisely the space we work in. Our focus isn’t on adding more layers of control. It’s on understanding how your existing system functions in reality — especially the human side of it.
With more than 40 years combined experience working in risk management in this industry, and behavioural science; we look at the intersection of culture, behaviour and security decision-making. That includes how teams perceive threats, how they respond under pressure and how organisational signals shape their actions.
Our work involves:
Cultural and behavioural diagnostics
Looking beyond compliance to understand norms, attitudes and informal practices within security teams.
Holistic vulnerability reviews
Assessing how people, processes and context interact — not treating them as separate silos.
Practical strategy design
Developing realistic improvements that fit operational environments, rather than idealised models.
Supporting implementation and helping you embed change so it lasts, instead of producing reports that sit on shelves.
For risk managers, this kind of work provides something rare: early visibility of issues that would otherwise surface later as incidents.
A Quiet Competitive Advantage
There’s also a monumental upside beyond risk reduction: operators with mature, community-aware security cultures often find that:
Local tensions de-escalate faster
Community dialogue improves
Workforce morale stabilises
External stakeholders show greater trust
ESG narratives carry more credibility
None of this requires grand gestures. It comes from consistent, respectful, predictable behaviour on the ground.
In competitive jurisdictions, that can quietly become a differentiator.
A Final Thought for Risk Leaders
If you’re responsible for organisational risk, it’s worth asking one candid question: Do you truly understand how our security teams behave when no one from head office is watching? Not in a disciplinary sense — in a systemic sense.
Because in extractives, operational continuity depends as much on social dynamics as on geology and engineering. Security behaviour sits right at that intersection. Taking a closer look at it isn’t a sign of distrust. It’s a sign of mature risk management. And increasingly, it’s what separates operators who manage disruption from those who get surprised by it.
