About AEGIS
AEGIS is a London based, privately owned, British security and risk management company
with overseas o ces in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Beijing, Iraq and the USA. We have
substantial experience and a world-wide client-base, including governments, international
agencies and the international corporate sector. We are a registered and active
UN contractor, a major security provider to the US government and security advisor
to the Lloyds Joint War Risk Committee.
We o er comprehensive advice on every aspect of security – from corporate operations,
commercial risk and foreign investment to counter-terrorism, close protection and
support to governments. We run a worldwide network of o ces, contacts, and associates
and our clients further bene t from the extensive capabilities of our personnel,
built up through careers in the military, diplomatic and intelligence services,
as well as in the police, journalism, the UN, nance and commerce.
This breadth of knowledge, combined with our global reach and wide practical experience,
allows us to provide the highest quality specialist security advice as well as risk
management solutions that take meticulous account of the speci c requirements of
each client.
About ASTRA
Open source information is available to all. The problem today is not so much access
to information as assessment. Is it reliable? What does it mean? How does what it
tells one about an individual country or problem relate to the wider world?
Most private intelligence providers o er an event driven service about an attack,
a coup, a natural disaster. These companies can tell you what has happened and the
back-ground to it, useful information while the event is occuring and in its immediate
aftermath.Their private sources can often add valuable background to the event,
but what they can tell you is essentially episodic.
The AEGIS Strategic Risk Assessment (ASTRA) proposes a radically di erent approach,
one that draws together a vast range of diverse and often contradictory information
to arrive at a conclusion about a country. Every country is embedded in the map
and rated relative to the rest of world. The rating is compiled by Aegis analysts
drawing on their extensive area expertise and range of sources. The rating covers
3 main axes, Political Risk, Business Risk and Ethical Risk. This 3 D structure
encompasses 48 di erent independent risk factors.
About Risk
Risk is Relative: If someone asks “How bad is it?” the best reply is “Relative to
what?”. Risk is always a relative concept. The ASTRA model has several built in
comparison schema which let you look at a country’s risk relative to its neighbours
or region. You can also de ne custom regions – groups of countries that you want
to cross compare.
Risk is Contextual : Risk is not an absolute but relies on its context to give it
meaning. Something can be a major threat in one context but harmless in another.
Think of a child’s toy on a shelf….. or on the stairs with the lights out. Likewise,
what is risky for me may not be risky for you. That’s why we designed our ASTRA
model to be customisable. You de ne what factors are most important to you. You
provide the context for the risk assessment. By changing the weighting factors,
you de ne your own risk space.
Risk lies in the Future: Risk lives at the margin of the known, where the incremental
knowledge is. The ASTRA model is forward looking. It relies on human judgement rather
than being a mechanical process driven by historic data series. Alongside the current
risk score, our analysts also evaluate future trends in all risk factors.