
Sabotage
A State Level Strategy
Countering Sabotage
An Organisation Wide Approach
Sabotage is the deliberate act of destroying, damaging or disrupting a process, system, or organisation to cause harm or hinder its effectiveness. This intentional interference can target physical structures, equipment, or digital systems and is often motivated by political, economic, or personal grievances. It is an aggressive act that may take place against a range of industries, military establishments and personnel as well as the critical national infrastructure.
Its aim is to create chaos, panic, disrupt productivity and damage reputations; it can be undertaken secretly at a strategic level and can be designed to avoid detection or attribution. At an operational level there is a similarity to Terrorism, but at a strategic level, it reflects the objectives of a hostile state. Seen as part of an overall strategic plan that state will commit a wide range of intelligence resources and undertake intense planning to ensure success. It is understanding this, that drives the protective security measures against sabotage and which requires an integrated, organisation wide approach.
Sabotage – More Than an Emerging Threat
While maybe associated with the Cold War, the conflict in Ukraine has seen the Russian’s use proxies as they plan and undertake sabotage attacks in the West. The video opposite, which is presented by Aidan Anderson of RedLeaf Consultancy, sets out some of the issues, at the time of posting on LinkedIn in October 2024. Should you wish to make any comments or contact RedLeaf Consultancy, please use the link here.
Below is a link to a podcast on Spotify that explores some of the sabotage issues further.

Understanding Sabotage
To help organisations understand the full scope of sabotage, RedLeaf Consultancy offers targeted briefings at the Strategic, Operational, and Tactical levels. These briefings are designed to engage stakeholders, facilitating interaction and a deeper appreciation of how sabotage could impact them and their organisational responsibilities. .
Exploring and Understanding the Threat
While organisations in the same sector may share similarities, each is unique, with differences in outsourcing practices, individual responsibilities and risk management and governance frameworks. These factors directly influence the sabotage threat, as potential targets often do not fall within neatly defined boundaries.
RedLeaf Consultancy collaborates with organisations to deliver a tailored threat assessment that considers their specific structures and dependencies, enabling the creation of new risk profiles or refining those that exist.


Refreshing The Risk Profile
Each organisation must determine its own acceptable level of risk. By conducting a thorough threat assessment and evaluating it against current mitigation measures, RedLeaf Consultancy can offer a clear view of the potential impact of sabotage activities. Since risk levels cannot be defined by RedLeaf Consultancy, this process involves close collaboration with stakeholders to establish practical controls that acknowledges and addresses the underlying risks.
Managing Risk – Ensuring Resilience
Sabotage response is managed through a Risk Management process, which may involve implementing and monitoring personnel security, ensuring information security, and applying various physical security measures. While these controls might already exist, RedLeaf Consultancy’s role is to advise on their individual and combined impact through a Protective Security approach. To ensure the controls effectively mitigate risks over time, even as threats or the organisation evolve, RedLeaf Consultancy recommends integrating the response within a robust Risk and Governance framework. It is this approach that creates resilience within an organisation, to ensure it can adapt quickly to disruption, maintain critical operations and enables the ongoing delivery of core products.

Further Reading From Our Library

Espionage, Sabotage and Subversion, they didn’t stop with the end of the Cold War

Protective Security – An Integrated Approach
RedLeaf Consultancy
Integrating Security – Bringing Transparency
Available to Meet Your Needs
Available to speak to, video conference, email or meet in person, RedLeaf Consultancy is conveniently located in Northern Ireland, to enable travel throughout the UK, Republic of Ireland and via airport hubs, Internationally.
To Contact RedLeaf Consultancy
Phone: +44 (0) 7720 820023
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