Risk rises across the Middle East and the Americas after a year defined by two global health emergencies, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and AI-driven cyberattacks
(McLean, VA) September 30, 2026 — Global Guardian, the leading international duty of care provider serving Fortune 1000 companies, high-net-worth individuals, and global organizations, today released its 2027 Global Risk Map, revealing where risk is rising, where it is falling, and why a country’s rating can hide the real danger to travelers on the ground.
New this year: Five designations that highlight risks a country-level rating can miss. The 2027 map identifies the cities carrying the highest overall risk, the countries with the highest data exposure risk, where travelers should carry a dedicated "burner device," and the countries with the highest risk of arbitrary detention, health threats, and environmental hazards.
The map rates countries across key indicators including crime, conflict, health, natural disasters, infrastructure, political stability, civil unrest, and terrorism. Significant shifts this year include risk rising across the Middle East and parts of the Americas while Jamaica, South Korea, and Hungary improved.
Those shifts follow a year of compounding disruption. In 2026 alone, two global health emergencies (Hantavirus and Ebolavirus), the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the oil shock that followed, and the arrival of AI models with superhuman hacking capabilities created new challenges for governments, businesses, and travelers.
The report also examines how crime and conflicts fluctuate across cities, rural areas, and peripheral regions. While cities often have more developed infrastructure, stronger government control, and better medical care than the surrounding countryside, a city just a few miles away can face far higher levels of crime and civil unrest. Rural areas are typically insulated from urban crime and protest, but peripheral regions carry their own threats: Weak government control, bandits, traffickers, insurgents, and infectious disease.
“Risk doesn’t stop at a country’s borders, and a national rating can’t paint a full picture,” said Global Guardian CEO Dale Buckner. “Understanding where a threat exists, what’s driving it and how it changes across regions helps organizations and travelers make more informed decisions about where and how they operate.”
As physical and cyber threats, geopolitical tensions, economic pressures, and local security conditions increasingly collide, understanding what drives risk at both the country and regional level is essential to protecting businesses and travelers worldwide.
Click here to download and explore additional insights from the 2027 Global Risk Map.
ABOUT GLOBAL GUARDIAN
Global Guardian is an integrated security and intelligence company based in McLean, Virginia. It maintains the world's most complete network of operators, analysts, and assets, so that wherever its clients are in the world, and however suddenly that world changes, someone is already there, already prepared, and already moving.
Its capabilities span travel security and duty of care, executive and residential protection, physical security and camera surveillance, cyber security and digital protection, and risk intelligence and investigations, coordinated through a 24/7 Operations Center and delivered in more than 140 countries. HALO, Global Guardian's Intelligence and Response Platform, gives clients personnel location, travel intelligence, and one-tap SOS wired directly to response, including medical support, emergency evacuation, and protection on the ground.
Global Guardian's leadership and advisory team is drawn from military operations, special forces, intelligence, and federal law enforcement. That experience is why the company holds that the decisive advantage in security is always human: the intelligence to anticipate, the presence to act, and the response to own the outcome.
