Risk calculation of money transports

There is an ongoing debate here in sweden on the risks of transporting money to and from ATM-machines. There have been a large number of incidents (robberys) where the transport cars have been attacked with heavily armed robbers, sometimes bombing the transport van open. These attacks show excessive violence, and swedish government (some sub-division) dissalowed companies (security firms) from doing these transports for a few days, due to rough working conditions and the high risk. A stop in the transfer of money to and from the ATM's during the weekend would be terrible, as this pre-christmas holiday usually tops the charts of the year.

Let's do some basic risk assessment of this scenario. Let's look at the commonly practiced formula:

Risk = Threat * Vulnerability * Asset Value

This formula states that the Risk, is calculated by the factors Threat - which is a measurement of how "able" an attacker would be. How much of a threat is he? How much fundings does he have, how much knowledge etc; Vulnerability, which is a measurement of how vulnerable the object are; And last Asset value, which is a measurement of how much the object under observation is worth to an attacker. Let's explain these varables from the perspective of this scenario. +

Threat
The robberers are often highly armed with offensive weapons such as automatic carbines, guns and explosives - and defensive gear such as protective vests et cetera. The incidents are often very well planned, and the attackers show no signs of avoiding violence. From this, we can say that they are professionals. They have funding, which means that they will get the gear that they need, they have knowledge which means that they can use the gear, plan the attack and get away et cetera. The Threat parameter in this scenario can thus easily be calculated as High.

Vulnerability
Most commonly, the transport vans are stopped by a roadblock. Sometimes the attack is done during loading/unloading of money. The vulnerability of this "system" is that the van is mobile and moves on public streets, which means that the attackers can get them; That they travel alone, one van by one, without any protection else that the blast safe van and two armed officers (not polices though). These vans are vulnerable to attacks when they stop, load/unloads cargo, go into remote places et cetera. They do have protection and a casual home-robberer will most likely not be able to perform the attack, thus we estimate this factor to be somewhere close to Medium to High.

Asset value
The value of the asset, or the cargo, in these vans are huge. Sometimes hundreds of millions. This factor determines how attractive the target is, and an sophisticed, well funded attacker, might very well spend 1-10 millons on getting the right people, planning and buying gear if the trait is 10-100 millions. In this scenario, the assetvalue is High.

If we translate these on the scale of 1 to 10, we get that Threat = 10, Vulnerability = 7, and Asset value = 10. The calculations would the be:

Risk = Threat * Vulnerability * Asset value
Risk = 10 * 7 * 10 = 700 / 1000

The calculations them selves are of no real importance. The fact is that the risk is high, but what can we do about it?

So how can we decrease the Risk?
If we want to lower the risk, we have to lower any of the three factors.

The Threat is somewhat impossible to lower, as it comes from how able and motivated attackers are. This might possibly be lowered by having rougher penalties for these crimes so that more of the "able ones" are in prison longer, perhaps a better social system which focuses on "future criminals" at young ages, or perhaps implementing systems that makes it hard for criminals to employ foreign "partners" and expertise.

The Vulnerability on the other hand could be lowered by having more armed vans, making them harder to attack with explosives; More personell in the vans and more heavily armed (this might in the long run put a larger threat on the society though); Police escorts of all transports et cetera. This factor is roughly lowered by employing defensive mechanisms at the object.

The Asset value parameter comes from the high amount of money in the van. Less money and instead running transports more frequently would make the trait of one van less valuable. Less shopping with money in its physicall form would decrease the flow of cash, thus decreasing the need for transporting them.

Currently the security firms doing these transports have decreased the amount of money in the vans. The government has proposed that citizens should avoid using physicall money, and use credit cards instead. The proposal of getting rid of physical money entirely caused huge protests. Something has to be done, and I think the system itself is flawed. I surely wouldn't mind getting rid of plain cash, as they cause me nothing other than trouble. As it is today, we sometimes have to pay a fine if we use a credit card when buyin items of low costs, but perhaps it should be the other way around? Calculating with the costs of securing these money-transports, a fine for contributing to them would be suitible? There are alot of questions regarding this that are yet to be answered.