The recent mass casualty shooting at a music festival in LasVegas is the latest active shooter event to threaten personal andcommercial safety and well-being.

From 2000 through the first half of 2016, more than 600 peoplewere killed in 213 active shooter events identified by the FederalBureau of Investigation. These attacks have affectedorganizations of all types, including schools, retailers, healthcare organizations, manufacturers, entertainment venues and arenas and hospitalitybusinesses.

Related: The real threat of workplaceviolence

Here are three ways that your organization can prepare for an active shooter event and beready to protect and aid employees, customers, and guests, managecritical business functions, and quickly return to normaloperations.

Planning and testing

Every organization should establish a policy to reduce therisk of workplace violence andimpacts from active shooter events. This policy should:

• Establish procedures through which employees can report violentor troubling behavior.

• Set criteria for escalating incidents to a pre-defined threatassessment or management team.

• Address additional security measures that may be needed tosafeguard employees, guests, and others.

• Reflect input from your organization’s security, humanresources, and legal teams, and potentially law enforcement, alongwith feedback from workforces.

• Be reinforced through tabletop exercises and drills.

Security, crisis communications, emergency response (includingactive shooter), humanitarian assistance, and crisis managementplans should align with your workplace violence prevention plan.They should be similarly updated and reinforced regularly.

Protecting people

The primary focus during and after a violent event should be onemployees, customers, and guests. Your organization should beprepared to:

• Execute active shooter response options: Run, hide, andfight.

• Provide first aid and other support to injured individuals (whensafe to do so).

• Care for employees who witness an incidentand may be traumatized and/or in shock, including possibly fundingfor grief or trauma counseling.

• Respectfully attend to deceased employees and support familiesand loved ones.

In a crisis, communication will be essential but could behampered by misinformation, panic, and other factors — especiallyin public or event spaces. Develop a clear protocol for responseteam members to communicate during and after an attack with eachother, employees, customers, guests, security, law enforcement,corporate headquarters and other stakeholders.

Business continuity and recovery

After addressing immediate life safety and investigativeconcerns, focus should shift to maintaining operations. Thatincludes accounting for:

• Continuing or resuming critical business functions andprocesses.

• Allowing employees to work remotely as needed.

• Review security measures.

• Providing additional humanitarian assistance support, asrequired.

• Identifying and addressing potential gaps in insuranceprograms.

Active shooter events and other forms of violence can strikeanywhere and any time, and unfortunately they often arise withoutwarning. Businesses cannot fully eliminate these threats, but youcan take action now that may reduce the risk to your organization,better protect its people and hasten its recovery.

Renata Elias is a consultant with the Marsh Risk ConsultingStrategic Risk Practice. Contact her at [email protected]. Thisarticle first appeared on Marsh.com and is reprinted here with permission.Visit the Marsh Risk in Contextblog for the original post.