Introducing Digital-7 Threat Assessment of Individuals in Digital Environments

One of the most challenging threats towards the security of the society is attacks from violent lone offenders, individuals that act alone or with minimal help from others without any economic gains or direct orders from organizations. Over the past few years, several terror attacks have been accompanied by manifestos published on social media platforms that outline ideology, motivation, and in some cases tactical choices. The trend in publishing manifestos and other communication on social media sites before committing an attack has increased the need for threat assessment in digital environments. Most existing methods for threat assessment are developed to be used in offline settings where information about an individual is accessible and cases where the individual is present and can answer questions. In this paper, we present seven indicators that can be used to assess the potential threat of violence based on digital communication only. The seven indicators are designed to be used when analyzing texts and can be seen as a complement to other risk assessment protocols.