Our Mission and Core Values

Mission

The Center for Threat Management was established to provide the knowledge and practical expertise necessary to manage the effects of disabling and disruptive threats. This includes a systematic methodology to identify, evaluate, and implement solutions through focused education, experimentation, and operational evaluation programs.

CTM research supports the charter of GT2 with a focus on the myriad of threats to commerce, critical infrastructure, and national security, with the primary objective of securing and increasing the resilience of the mechanisms by which global trade is conducted. This research leverages two decades of lessons learned and best practices developed as a federal government operational research center, in partnership with hundreds of organizations in the public and private sectors.

Core Values

As a non-profit corporation serving the public benefit, CTM maintains core values that preserve the integrity of its research and the trust placed by its partners: value and impartiality.

With roots as an academic research organization, CTM recognizes that research is of no consequence if it doesn’t add to the body of knowledge. Further, knowledge itself is insignificant unless it is associated with an application or otherwise drives action. In order to ensure that its programs add value, CTM strives to focus on timely and relevant subject matter, current and near-term scenarios that challenge established capabilities and organizational paradigms. Emphasizing the application component of knowledge, CTM conducts research that is “operational” in nature, its value reinforced in the end goal of implementation.

A secondary component of value is cost-effectiveness. CTM research achieves this through collaboration and consolidation, which minimizes the organizational burden required to plan, conduct, and evaluate operations through integration of priorities and objectives from multiple stakeholders. These programs are supported by a systematic methodology, based on the principles of systems engineering, which ensures standardization, repeatability, and a focus on satisfaction of sponsor requirements and participant objectives.

CTM exists to serve the public interest, not to enrich its stakeholders. As a result, the organization maintains an obligation to pursue product- and implementation-agnostic solutions. This impartiality is critical to credible research and to the spirit of innovation, and is pervasive in our programs. CTM partners can rest assured that, while commercial products may be exhibited as representative of capabilities, our research is conducted objectively, free from the influence of political and commercial pressure.