In the wake of the death of Washington Redskin’s player Sean Taylor, the VIP personal security – Body Guards of professional athletes is getting another look. In this Virginian-Pilot article, athletes talk about the threats they face off the playing field. The athletes discussed the range of options from bodyguards to guns but the one pro athlete who was spot on in this article was Allen Iverson. Iverson’s answer to the threats professional athletes face was “be vigilant at all times.” In the article, Iverson reminded us of Personal Security Lesson 101: “You’re aware that you are a target.” When it comes to VIP personal safety and security or body guards , this is the best advice anyone of us could offer to any executive or other high net worth individual facing similar circumstances. Awareness sets the other protective measures into motion. I relate Iverson’s comments to Jeff Cooper’s mental states of awareness (Cooper’s colors) which equates level of awareness and action, commensurate to the threat as the key to surviving hostile encounters.  If you can’t get this part right, the rest is just about useless. While there’s no doubt that the protective measures the other athletes mentioned in the Pilot article help, but without the constant vigilance that Iverson refers to, those same measures can become a liability. They create a false sense of security. Guns, Personal Protective Specialists, dogs etc…are simply a means to an end. There’s lots of water between means and mindset but mindset sets everything else in motion.From an VIP personal protection or Executive Protection standpoint, the one thing that struck me about the comments from the other athletes, other than Iverson, was the fact that all of the protective measures they mentioned were reactive in nature. I would have liked to hear that they were employing proactive techniques such as evasive driving, and surveillance detection. These techniques are just as effective against “street” criminals as they are against terrorists.