They chose to target private sector as alternatives because they understood that they can hit these places with mitigated chances of being caught and suffer casualties.

I am a veteran fighting against terrorists since the 1970s. From my experience, if the predetermined target is guarded heavily, the terror operatives in most cases will look for an alternative – ‘soft belly’ targets.

When terrorists were targeting the state of Israel, they understood that it would be impossible to attack official Israeli embassies aboard, so they switched to soft targets such as Jewish businesses and Jewish organisations which were not defended as heavily as government installations.

It was like this in the past, and it is still the same today. In 2003 a group of Al Qaeda operatives from Turkey planned to attack an Israeli cruise ships carrying tourists in the Mediterranean using vessels full of explosives. The ships and Turkish police were informed by the Israeli intelligence about the imminent attack, and defences were set up. Therfore the suicide bombers just switched to attacking other targets, causing more than 60 deaths and huge damage to businesses as well as the local population.

A direct target Al Qaeda aims at weakening the economic base of their enemies. Bin Laden believes that the real power of the ‘infidels’ lies with their military strength which is based on the economy, and one should weak the economical base in order to shutter the military might. Regimes in Muslim countries which have assisted the ‘infidels’ are also their targets.

Today we can’t underestimate Al Qaeda and the global Jihad movement. Unlike terrorists of the past, it is a sophisticated group with educated activists who know exactly what globalisation is and how to take advantages of its weaknesses. They understand economy and finance in the free world and are very resolute to undermine it. Bin Laden mentioned many times in his written letters or speeches to his followers that there are no differences between military and civilian; they are the same – infidels.

The terrorists’ prime targets today are tourism and crowded places such as hotels, restaurants, coffee houses, bars, cinemas and banks. Critical infrastructure, public or private, such as energy, water, finance, transportation and computer communications are also their target. The terrorists’ objective is to spread panic and fear, by inflicting huge casualties which obtains media coverage. Whether the bomb is five kilograms or half a tonne TNT, the psychological impact is almost the same – people will live in fear. This objective is achieved if people refrain from tourism and transportation. Remember what happened in Madrid, it was the public transportation which was attacked, resulting in a temporary decline of people using public transportation.

The damage to economy in certain places can be catastrophic. In Egypt, several hotels were hit all over the country, as the terrorists understood that tourism was a main source of income for Egypt. As a result, the Egyptian economy was badly hit, at least temporarily.

In Israel, numerous suicide terror attacks have happened since the beginning of the Second Intifada (uprising) eight years ago. These chains of terror activities have changed the behaviour of our consumers – there is a dramatic decrease of Israeli public going out for daily purchases.

The real question is not whether private sector is targeted, but when.

Responsibility It is clear now that terrorists are targeting private sector. But who is responsible to protect? Usually you will hear comments like – “what can we do, it’s the government’s job, we can do nothing.”

I think they are right to say that it is a government responsibility to protect its civilians. And it is right to say that in the past it was only the government’s responsibility, when terror was much less complicated.

It was national terrorism - you knew exactly who were the heads of it, where the headquarters were, and the targets were mainly governmental and military.

Nevertheless, terrorism is now so complicated. It targets the entire economy and impacts all aspects of life. So the responsibility to fight terrorism should be shared by all, not only the government.

This is the Israeli experience. Our government does a lot in order to protect us from terrorism, but private sector is taking responsibility too – a player with the government defending themselves and the public which is their clients.

The public of our age demands security. It’s the government’s job to supply it but it is also in my point of view the responsibility of private sector - not only to safeguard their clients, but to safeguard their employees. This is their responsibility and also the reputation of their business.

To-do list: The threat is there, organisations have several things to do: first of all is risk assessment concerning their business, big or small. The moment they have risk assessment, they can prepare contingency plans, educate your employees, make them and clients feel safe.

How much you should spend on protection depends on what the threats are, how sensitive your organisation is and how much you would like to spend on protecting it. You can be clear about all these through risk analysis.

If you assess your risk and conclude that you are not a target of terrorists. I would ask how you came to this conclusion. Sometimes people say that terrorists have not struck here for several years, so they will not strike in the future. This is wrong. I admit that it is impossible to give 100 per cent defence but it is possible to mitigate and sometimes dramatically reduce the damage of terror activities.

Every crowded place, in my point of view should be defended, as we are doing in Israel. Of course, if you have a very small kiosk with one man selling ice cream to children, I do not expect you to bring sophisticated counter-terror measures, simply because the cost of this practice exceeds the value of the business.

Risk analysis and planning should be conducted at least once a year to reflect the changes in threat landscape and adopt new methods to protect your organisation.

While the senior management should be involved in assessing the risk, they can’t do it all by themselves. They can assess the risk of their own products because they have expertise in that; but as they are not anti-terror specialists and often don’t know terrorists’ modus operandi, they have to do with professionals, often consultants. There is no replacement to experienced people in this field.

Then they need to prepare contingency plans, containing details for all the situations before, during and after the attack. They need to have the plans in their drawers, so that they will be prepared if things happen and the plans need to be executed.

Organisations also need to establish communications with the authorities as well as emergency services. These communications should also be incorporated into the drills. In an actual terrorist attack, the quicker you have your communications with emergency services, the more you will mitigate the consequences of the attack.

Another thing which is the most important in my point of view is the awareness and alertness of all of your employees to the threat of terrorism.

They need to understand what might be the signs of terrorists collecting information or imminent attacks. They also have to understand where to pay attention and how.

As a private organisation, that means gathering your employees several times a year and telling them to keep their eyes open to suspicious events indicating you are targeted. The alertness of your employees helps the whole society fight against terror as well. In 2006, an employee of an electronics shop informed the authorities that a video footage that he was asked to convert into DVD was about Jihadist training. This information led to the foiling of the plot to attack an US military base in New Jersey and the arrest of the terrorist group members.

Zacarias Moussaoui, the Al Qaeda member who planned to participate in hijacking one of the planes on 9/11 attended a flight school in Arizona with his accomplices. A few weeks before the attack, the school raised some concerns about his suspicious behaviour to FBI, which was unfortunately overlooked by the secret service agency.

In this case, though the tragic attack was not prevented, it is important to note that this crucial information came from a private sector company.

This is what I mean by awareness of the public. You should not train the whole population to become informers and spies, but if you have certain level of awareness, people will contribute to deter terror, but not raise false alarms.

Business as usual When fighting terrorism, we are not going to change our way of life. I believe private sector will benefit from signalling that business is as usual. Although we have to defend ourselves, to have security guards, to have CCTV cameras, business will be as usual. So their customers will feel safe, you will keep coming back although they are witnessing terror activities each night on TV.

Private organisations should make the signs of increased defence visible. Because it not only deters those who are collecting information before executing terror attack, but also makes your customers feel much safer – to feel safe is in my point of view the most important thing in fighting against terrorism.

The confession from failed suicide bombers we captured shows that the moment they see that the target is guarded, they will switch and look for alternative.

What I recommend here is what we have done in Israel, where the cooperation between private sector and the government is very close on all the issues that I have mentioned above.

The private sector in Israel has very deep knowledge on terrorism so they take good care of protecting themselves. They partner with private security companies to make risk analysis. Their employees are trained more than once a year and work very closely with security guards. All measures taken are visible.

We execute the notion of shared responsibility of all aspects I recommended. It will be a long war fighting terror – we might win or lose batttles. But at the end, terror will be defeated – because they are facing a resolute world.

The message I have to say here is the threat is there, the arena is global, and terror attacks might happen any time any where – that’s what we have to bear in mind and be prepared for.