Morgan Atlas

Public places such as shopping centres are designed to be open, welcoming, and symbolic of community life. Yet this openness also creates vulnerability. In recent years, the rise of lone actor or “maverick” attacks, often involving knives or improvised weapons, has challenged traditional security models. Unlike organised groups, lone actors are unpredictable, radicalising in isolation and striking without warning.

To mitigate these risks, Australia must integrate security risk management and intelligence principles into a layered framework that balances vigilance with freedom. This blog explores how such principles can be applied to protect shopping centres and other public spaces while sustaining continuity and community confidence.

Understanding the Lone Actor Threat

Lone actors differ from coordinated terrorist cells in three critical ways:

• Unpredictability: They often act without external direction, making detection harder.
• Low‑tech methods: Attacks frequently involve knives, vehicles, or improvised weapons, bypassing traditional counterterrorism measures.
• Personal grievance: Motivations may blend ideology with personal instability, complicating profiling.

For shopping centres, this means risk cannot be eliminated but must be managed and mitigated through proactive systems.

Security Risk Principles Applied

Security risk management provides a structured way to anticipate and reduce harm. Its key components are threats, vulnerabilities, impact, and likelihood. We must move from theoretical Linkedin debates about the principles of security risk management and rapidly move into the implementation and action phase delivery of a chosen system. Applied to lone actor scenarios:

• Threats: Individuals radicalized online, fixated on grievances, or struggling with instability.
• Vulnerabilities: Open access points, crowded areas, limited screening, and staff untrained in threat recognition.
• Impact: Potential for injury, reputational damage, economic disruption, and community fear.
• Likelihood: While statistically rare, lone actor attacks carry high consequence, warranting prioritization.

By mapping these elements, shopping centres can design risk dashboards that prioritise vulnerabilities and allocate resources effectively.

Intelligence Principles for Prevention

Intelligence is the structured process of turning information into actionable insight. Its principles, collection, analysis, dissemination, and feedback, are vital for disrupting lone actor threats.

1. Collection
   • Surveillance systems, staff observations, and community reporting provide raw data.
   • Social media monitoring can identify individuals expressing violent intent or fixation.
2. Analysis
   • Threat assessment centres evaluate behavioural indicators, distinguishing genuine risks from false positives.
   • Pattern recognition helps identify escalation pathways, such as fixation turning into planning.
3. Dissemination
   • Insights must reach frontline staff, police, and management in real time.
   • Clear communication protocols ensure that warnings translate into action.
4. Feedback
   • Lessons from incidents refine protocols, training, and design.
   • Continuous adaptation ensures resilience remains dynamic.

Layered Mitigation Strategies

1. Detection and Early Intervention

• Develop multidisciplinary Fixated Threat Assessment capabilities that bring together police, psychologists, and intelligence officers. While such formal units may be unrealistic within private enterprises, organisations responsible for public spaces, such as shopping centres, should appoint dedicated security risk specialists with the expertise to recognise behavioural threats and, critically, the ability to collaborate effectively with local police. In today’s threat environment, it is essential that law enforcement has confidence in, and trust toward, the individuals they engage with. Train staff to recognise behavioural red flags, agitation, fixation, or suspicious loitering.
• Encourage community reporting through trusted channels, reducing stigma and fear of reprisal.

Recent research shows that lone actors rarely strike without warning. Studies of past attacks reveal patterns of grievance, fixation, and leakage of intent that can be observed if systems are in place to detect them.

Multidisciplinary threat assessment centres, community reporting channels, and integration of mental health services are proven methods to disrupt these pathways before violence occurs.

This reinforces the need for shopping centres to embed intelligence principles into daily operations, ensuring threats are identified early and addressed with both discipline and compassion.

2. Preparedness and Response

• Conduct scenario drills for stabbing or lone actor attacks, emphasising rapid communication and evacuation.
• Designate safe zones and clear sightlines within shopping centres to aid containment.
• Equip security staff with de‑escalation training and non‑lethal intervention tools.

The reality is that many security practitioners are not adequately equipped to deal with a determined perpetrator, let alone multiple offenders. Incidents such as the recent Bankstown Central case, where members of the public intervened against a knife‑wielding attacker using improvised means like chairs, highlight this gap.

Security personnel should possess a proficient level of self‑defence capability or be trained in tactical use‑of‑force (UOF) options appropriate to their role. At present, this is often not the case. Historically, many practitioners entered the field with martial arts backgrounds or prior military and police experience, which provided at least a basic grounding in UOF techniques. Today, however, such skills are less common, leaving a critical capability gap in frontline security.

A police response will not be instant. The Bondi Junction incident showcased how many people were killed or injured prior to police arrival where lethal force ultimately mitigated anymore carnage.

3. Resilience and Continuity

• Develop recovery protocols to reopen centres quickly after incidents, preserving public confidence. Noting the inevitable crime scene delays post-incident, all elements of the organisation should aim to achieve this as soon as is reasonably practicable.
• Frame public communication around resilience, not fear, reinforcing community trust.
• Embed symbolic continuity, rituals of reopening, visible support services, to sustain morale.

Balancing Security and Freedom

The greatest challenge is balancing protection with openness. Shopping centres must remain welcoming, not militarised. Excessive visible security risks eroding their symbolic role as community hubs. The solution lies in invisible resilience: systems that protect without overwhelming, protocols that prepare without instilling fear.

This balance mirrors intelligence principles: anticipate quietly, act decisively, adapt continuously. It also echoes risk management: prioritize vulnerabilities without overreacting to low‑probability threats.

Practical Recommendations for Australian Centres

1. Risk Dashboards: Map vulnerabilities, impacts, and likelihoods to prioritize resources.
2. Intelligence Cycles: Embed collection, analysis, dissemination, and feedback into daily operations.
3. Community Partnerships: Collaborate with police, health services, and local groups for shared vigilance.
4. Staff Empowerment: Train retail staff to report concerns and security staff to de‑escalate threats.
5. Design Resilience: Incorporate safe zones, controlled access, and clear evacuation routes.
6. Symbolic Continuity: Communicate resilience through rituals of reopening and visible community support.

Mitigating lone actor threats in Australian shopping centres requires more than security guards or surveillance cameras. It demands resilience: integrating risk management and intelligence principles with cultural codes of discipline and service.

Private enterprise organisations are responsible for managing many of Australia’s public spaces and community hubs. Within this environment, the commercial reality of employing highly competent security risk practitioners remains a challenge, particularly when weighed against core business priorities.

However, what is increasingly evident is that the true cost of underinvestment in professional security capability is often realised only after an incident. These costs are not limited to financial losses; they extend to moral responsibility and reputational damage, which can be significant and long‑lasting for organisations entrusted with public safety.

Building Resilient Public Spaces

By anticipating threats, prioritising vulnerabilities, and embedding continuity, shopping centres can remain both safe and welcoming. Resilience in this context is proactive and systemic, not reactive or isolated. Public spaces become more than retail environments, they function as resilient community hubs, designed to absorb shocks and maintain continuity even in the face of unpredictable threats.

This approach integrates three essential layers:

•            Risk management to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities.

•            Intelligence principles to anticipate and adapt to evolving threats.

•            Operational resilience to ensure recovery and continuity after incidents.

When these elements are combined, shopping centres and other public places can balance openness with safety, sustaining their role as trusted spaces for community life while reducing exposure to lone actor risks.

Ultimately, mitigating lone actor threats in Australian public spaces requires a balanced approach that combines structured risk management, practical intelligence processes, and realistic investment in frontline capability. Shopping centres and other hubs of community life cannot rely solely on reactive measures; they need systems that anticipate warning signs, empower staff, and build trusted partnerships with police and local services. While commercial pressures often make security investment a challenge, the financial, reputational, and moral costs of inadequate preparation are far greater. By embedding resilience into everyday operations, organisations can maintain safe, welcoming environments while reducing exposure to unpredictable risks.