Tyler Adams![A quote from Daniel Devery, Manager for Crisis and Threat Management: “I knew that if I wrote an email to our senior leadership and said, ‘this is happening’ [based on a Factal alert], I wouldn’t have to turn around in 45 minutes and make a correction.” The text and Assurant and Factal's logos are overlaid atop a picture of Assurant employees running a fundraising race.](https://blog.factal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/assurantheader.png)
How do you re-invent your security organization on the fly, during the height of pandemic restrictions?
When Daniel Devery first joined Assurant’s Global Security & Safety team, part of his job description was travel safety. But since his start date was in a COVID wave in 2020, he could count the number of people traveling for the company on two hands.
“We had six emergency travelers,” Devery, now the Manager for Crisis and Threat Management, recalls. Assurant has over 14,000 employees and the Fortune 500 business services company had restricted non-essential business travel.
He turned his attention to starting up a new division – one that provides both tactical and strategic intelligence services with comprehensive global coverage. Devery spoke to Security Executive Council faculty about how the team used Factal and longtime Factal partner Emergent Risk International to outpunch their weight and support business lines across Assurant’s global operations.
Some of the highlights from Assurant’s experience with Factal:
Decision-ready intelligence raised the team’s profile
Within weeks of becoming Factal members, the team was confident delivering Factal alerts to internal clients in Facilities, Physical Security and Incident Response teams to act on. “I knew that if I wrote an email to our senior leadership and said, ‘this is happening’, I wouldn’t have to turn around in 45 minutes and make a correction,” Devery says. “It was all systems go.”
Instead of losing valuable time searching for confirmation and context, Crisis and Threat Management set up the relevant teams to capitalize on their risk intelligence advantage. “At Assurant, we try and find either avenues that will help us weather the storm better than our competitors or find opportunities for business growth,” Devery says.
“There’s a high level of trust in the platform. The chat feature allows me to go out and ask questions. The team pushes out information so quickly that I often don’t need to, but it’s really reassuring to have.”
– Daniel Devery, Manager for Crisis and Threat Management at Assurant
The team benchmarked critical events live with Factal Incident Chat
Factal’s 24/7 Chat means security and crisis professionals across the globe can talk anonymously with the editors on duty about news as it breaks. In 2023, Factal introduced Incident Chat, connecting organizations with assets and interests around events both planned (like the upcoming Summer Games) and surprising (like October 7).
With Assurant’s lean team supporting 75 locations across four continents, Devery and his colleagues rely on Chat and Incident Chat to get up to speed. “There’s a high level of trust in the platform,” Devery shares. “The chat feature allows me to go out and ask questions. The team pushes out information so quickly that I often don’t need to, but it’s really reassuring to have.”
Mobile app alerts kept senior leaders informed and operators connected
Factal is used throughout Global Security & Safety, with a wide variety of applications. Senior leaders rely on Factal’s phone app for major news. The Crisis and Threat Management team receives proximity alerts when Factal editors geolocate incidents near assets and points of interest the team is tracking.
With such a large area of responsibility, it’s important for the right people to receive the notifications they need most – whether they’re at a desk or not. Factal’s app delivers that and more, with News Near Me for team members in the field and the ability to use Chat and send tips right from their devices.
To read the entire innovation case study, visit the Security Executive Council’s vendor innovation page, or click below:
Top photo via Assurant’s LinkedIn
What is Factal?
Trusted by many of the world’s largest companies and nearly 300 humanitarian NGOs, Factal is a risk intelligence and collaboration platform that brings clarity to an increasingly noisy and uncertain world.
Powered by a hybrid of advanced AI and experienced journalists, Factal detects early signals, verifies critical details and assesses the potential impact at the speed of social media. From physical incidents and brand mentions to geopolitical developments, Factal offers the most trusted, real-time risk intelligence on the market.
Factal is also home to the largest security and safety collaboration network in the private sector. Members securely share information with other members in proximity to the same incident, both on Factal.com and the Factal app.
Learn more at Factal.com, and we’d love to hear from you.