Protective services and close protection

Our protective team has a medic. Is that enough?

Almost never, and the gap only shows when it counts. A medic on a team without a named medical direction is working without the person who carries medical responsibility for their protocols, who makes prescription drug procurement possible at all, and who they reach when a decision goes beyond their own scope.

Without that, the medic either carries too little to help or carries something they have no basis for. Either way the consequence falls to you and not to them alone. We put the medical direction in place, tie it to the country or the area of operation involved, and set up the telemedical link.

We would like armed protection. Is that possible in Germany?

Rarely, and almost never at short notice. Clients from Israel, the United States or the Middle East are used to armed details and assume the position here is comparable. It is not.

A firearms permit under section 28 WaffG is not a company license. The need has to be established for a specific guarding assignment relating to a specific endangered person under section 19 WaffG or a specific endangered object, and the act expressly does not provide for a general permit covering a company. The weapon may be carried only while that particular assignment is actually being performed. For every individual guard the authority must consent before firearms are handed over, and it must refuse consent where the company's liability insurance does not cover the handling of firearms by guards. Getting the authority to accept that the person is endangered is the real hurdle, not the paperwork.

For a visit lasting a few days this is usually not achievable. What happens in the market instead is worth knowing before it is offered to you. The job gets accepted, and the people who turn up hold a permit issued for an entirely different assignment, often staff whose normal work is cash in transit and who have never been trained in close protection. That holds up neither legally nor professionally, and if it goes wrong the consequences are yours.

On top of that, in most cases it is not warranted. The threat picture in Germany rarely calls for it, and a visibly armed escort raises the profile at exactly the moment a protective plan is meant to lower it. We say so upfront and plan so that the weapon is not the load-bearing part. Where a mandate genuinely requires it, it runs through a provider holding a permit for that specific assignment, with the lead time that takes.

What does a license tell you about a provider?

Less than most buyers assume, and in Germany very little indeed. The statutory floor for close protection there is a forty-hour chamber of commerce course that ends without an exam. Meeting it makes an officer legal to deploy and says nothing about whether they are any good.

In other countries the floor sits higher, or there is none at all. So do not rely on the license, rely on what can be checked independently. We look at three things. Whether the provider appears in the national register, because that shows somebody has at least examined their reliability. Actual insurance cover measured against the mandate rather than against a statutory minimum. And what the people being deployed have most recently rehearsed.

On larger mandates the IFC Performance Standard 4 checks come on top, meaning whether the provider can show on paper that its people were not implicated in past abuses, and whether rules on the use of force and a grievance mechanism exist. We give you the result in writing.

We want two officers for a week. Do we need all of this?

Sometimes no. If the requirement is genuinely a short, low-threat presence at a known venue, we will say so, connect you with a vetted local provider and stay out of the middle. We charge for planning when planning is what changes the outcome.

What does a detail do when nothing happens?

Most of the work. Advance work for tomorrow, coordination with the private office and the drivers, checking venues that have just appeared in the calendar, and fixing whatever snagged today. A detail that only reacts is an expensive misunderstanding.

How do you keep it discreet?

By designing for the principal's normal pattern rather than around it. Vehicles that match the setting, officers who fit the room, arrival routes that do not announce themselves, and no convoy where one car is safer. Discretion is mostly decisions made before anyone arrives.

Do you work with a client's existing team?

Often. A family office with an established detail usually needs an outside assessment, a better advance process and support for travel outside the home jurisdiction, not a replacement.