The Secret Service Threat Assessment Program of 21 October: Who in a 200-Person Organization Is Supposed to Run It?

On 21 October 2026 the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center released its first behavioral threat assessment guidance written for employers rather than for law enforcement or schools. The guidance is free and public, which changes the standard a small or midsize employer is held to: "we did not know how" is now a materially weaker position in litigation and before regulators.

The harder question the guide does not answer is ownership. NTAC's study of 173 mass attacks found that most attackers had already alarmed the people around them. In a 200-person organization those concerns land with HR or a line manager who has no process for weighing them, no clinical or legal advisor on call, and no threshold for escalating.

This Advisory sets out who should own behavioral threat assessment in an organization without a security department, how to stand up a three-seat team with a bypass reporting channel, which advisors to retain before you need them, and a 90-day build path. It situates the exposure across the Physical, Operational, Reputational, Financial and Strategic risk domains of the Nexus of Risk framework.