SalusTHIRA

Salus THIRA is an enterprise risk and capability-management methodology designed to help leaders understand what can happen, determine what their organizations must be capable of doing, identify where meaningful gaps exist, and decide where limited resources will make the greatest difference.

 

Built upon established Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment principles and informed by decades of Salus experience across emergency management, security, intelligence, aviation, critical infrastructure, cybersecurity, crisis communications, executive protection, investigations, and real-world operations, Salus THIRA moves beyond the traditional risk assessment.

 

The methodology uses a six-step process:

1. Identify threats and hazards

2. Give those threats and hazards context

3. Establish capability targets

4. Assess existing capabilities

5. Identify risks and capability gaps

6. Determine how proposed changes affect risk so leadership can prioritize what should be addressed first

 

The sixth step is what makes Salus THIRA particularly valuable.

 

Many assessments identify vulnerabilities and produce a list of recommendations. Salus THIRA is designed to help leadership understand the consequences of acting—or not acting. It evaluates how proposed changes affect capability and risk so executives and boards can determine what should be fixed first, where investment will have the greatest impact, what risks can reasonably be accepted, and how those decisions can be documented, communicated, and defended.

 

Built by Practitioners. Applied by Subject-Matter Experts.

 

Salus THIRA is not developed or operated by a single analyst or discipline.

 

The methodology draws upon the collective experience of the entire Salus team. Our subject-matter experts bring decades of experience from government, emergency management, aviation, intelligence, security, law enforcement, military operations, critical infrastructure, cybersecurity, engineering, crisis communications, investigations, executive protection, disaster response, finance, behavioral sciences, and other specialized disciplines.

 

The appropriate Salus experts are brought into the process based on the threats, capabilities, and operating environment being assessed. This allows a cybersecurity capability to be examined by people who understand cyber risk, an aviation capability by aviation professionals, an intelligence capability by intelligence practitioners, and emergency-management capabilities by people who have developed and operated emergency programs.

 

That multidisciplinary approach helps ensure Salus THIRA reflects how organizations actually operate, not simply how policies and plans say they operate.

 

Leadership and Program Development

 

Marc Duncan serves as the architect and executive leader of Salus THIRA, drawing upon more than three decades of research, preparedness doctrine, public safety, security, intelligence, aviation, critical-infrastructure planning, executive protection, and operational experience.

 

Scott Pickett and Bridget Lee-Young are prominent leaders of the Salus THIRA team, helping guide methodology development, program execution, client engagement, and stakeholder coordination.

 

They are supported by the broader Salus team of subject-matter experts who contribute their experience to the continued development and operation of the methodology.

 

Salus THIRA is therefore not a static assessment template. It is a continually evolving operating methodology informed by experienced practitioners, real-world incidents, ongoing operations, emerging threats, and direct engagement with the organizations it is designed to serve.

 

Clients and Stakeholders Are Part of the Process

 

Effective risk assessment cannot be performed in isolation.

 

Salus works directly with executives, operational personnel, subject-matter experts, stakeholders, and other people who understand how the organization actually functions. Their knowledge is essential to establishing realistic scenarios, meaningful capability targets, accurate assessments, and practical recommendations.

 

The process is designed to build organizational understanding and consensus while challenging assumptions that may have gone untested for years.

 

The objective is not for Salus to simply tell an organization what it should do.

 

The objective is to provide leadership with a credible, evidence-based understanding of risk and capability that supports better decisions.

 

From Risk Assessment to Decision Support

 

Salus THIRA connects threats and hazards to consequences, consequences to required capabilities, capabilities to existing resources, and identified gaps to investment decisions.

 

It helps leadership answer the questions that matter:

 

What can happen?

How serious could the consequences be?

What must we be capable of doing?

What can we actually do today?

Where are our most important gaps?

What changes if we address them?

What should we fix first?

What risk are we accepting if we do nothing?

 

Salus THIRA turns those questions into a structured, repeatable process for prioritizing preparedness, protection, resilience, and investment.

 

Identify the risk. Define the capability. Measure the gap. Determine what changes the outcome. Prioritize the investment.