Secure Product Creations' President Jim Noe says safety must be tailored to specific threats. The Enquirer/GARY LANDERS

For many Americans, a terrorist act is a distant event. For James W. Noe, president and founder of Cincinnati-based Secure Product Creations, guarding against terrorism is a daily task. Senior policy adviser to the State Department, Noe has been responsible for managing the vulnerability assessment of 241 U.S. embassies and completed more than 100 Secret Service missions, including protecting the president and other officials from explosive and chemical threats.

WHAT DOES YOUR COMPANY OFFER for homeland security efforts?

One of the things we saw beginning after 9/11 was a rush to try to take military-level equipment and beat it into a homeland security role. It was really too much protection for what the average first responder needed. There was a lot of homeland security money being wasted buying equipment that provided way too much protection. You might say, well, how can you have too much protection? There's only a finite amount of money that can be spent on homeland security so we tried to design a perimeter control kit that would provide an adequate level of protection for a first responder, who wasn't going to be going into the hot zone. By doing that we were able to outfit an entire set of first responders, as opposed to only trying to outfit, say, half of your first responder force.

ARE WE AT A POINT where individuals should have masks in their cars, at home, at work - just like you have an emergency brake on a car?

No, we're not there yet. There are too many contingencies for an individual to be issued a protective mask. Do you leave it at your house? Carry it with you wherever you go? Put it in your car? Take it to work with you? We need to consider specific targets. If that individual works at the Pentagon, then they need to be issued protection.

ONE RECENT ALERT was for civilian targets - especially the New York financial district. Implications?

You need to phase up protection. When you're talking about specific targets in New York and D.C., it goes away from what we're selling, but I don't believe that they're ready. You've got to ramp up. The first thing we need to protect against? Explosive attacks. The most likely event is a car bomb or suicide bomber. Begin by protecting ourselves against the most probable terrorism scenario. Then we can start taking a look at what else we can do to protect ourselves against additional threats.

John Eckberg