Our story
Arya began where the need was personal and urgent.
Places of worship, schools, cultural organisations, community centres — where the threat was real, the resources were limited, and the stakes were absolute.
What we knew — and what history confirms — is that the most influential factor in preventing or responding to acts of violence is early detection, early intervention, and early reporting by ordinary people who are immersed in their everyday environments. Not just specialist security teams. With mountains of evidence, it is clear: trained and confident people are the most effective safety asset any organisation has.
So we built a platform that reflected that reality. Evidence-based, media-rich, scenario-driven training — built for the way real people observe, assess, and respond in environments they know.
2023
Since inception, over 3,500 frontline staff have trained on Arya.
98% passed the post-course knowledge check. 87% reported a measurable increase in their confidence. 100% felt equipped and confident to respond — and 65% already had, with real examples to prove it.
April 2024
On 13 April 2024, a lone attacker moved through Bondi Junction shopping centre — one of Australia's most familiar, most trafficked retail environments. In under three minutes, six lives were lost.
That day changed the conversation in our team and throughout our country. We decided to double-down on our mission and extend impact beyond the communities we hold dear.
August 2024
In August 2024, Australia's threat level was raised to PROBABLE — and the Crowded Places Strategy made clear that owners and operators bear primary responsibility for protecting their sites, with a duty of care to everyone who works, uses, or visits them.
Arya looked up from the mission that had shaped us — and saw the same need, everywhere.
CROWDED PLACES SECURITY AWARENESS TRAINING PLATFORM
Purpose-built.
Arya is Australia's purpose-built Crowded Places Security Awareness Training platform — developed from evidence-based civilian threat response research, aligned to national counter-terrorism frameworks, and built for the way organisations actually operate, and frontline workforce actually learn.
Every day, millions of Australians walk into crowded places. They are someone's customers, someone's guests, someone's staff. And in every one of those environments, someone carries the responsibility to protect them. Not because a regulator demands it. But because it's the right thing to do— and because when something goes wrong in your space, there is no one else to look to.
Arya exists to solve the actual problem. To give leaders who take that responsibility seriously a way to honour it. And to give the people on the ground — the ones who will be first to see something, first to act — the capability and confidence to do exactly that.
We began our work in a community that faces ongoing, real threats — and proved that evidence-based civilian training changes outcomes. That proof is the foundation commercial Australia now stands on. When you invest in Arya, you are not just protecting your own people, you are making it possible for a NFP organisation — a place of worship, a cultural centre — to access the same quality of training, at a price that reflects their reality.
We are a business built for good. For profit, because sustainability funds the mission. For purpose, because the mission is why we exist.
FOUNDER
Claudia Stein
I believe that the people who are immersed in their own environments are best placed to make a difference in the outcome of a dangerous event. I believe wholeheartedly that awareness — and the routine training of it, like a muscle — is the most critical and timeless aspect of any security infrastructure. It deserves to be the solid foundation.
I believe it because I experienced it myself, and saw others respond the same way throughout my personal life and career.
For leaders today, calibrating the right level of security preparedness while maintaining a warm, welcoming atmosphere is no small challenge. The reassuring part is, you don't need to reinvent the wheel — we have found that balance within our own communities, and we share that knowledge with you.
The name says everything about our mission. Arya is derived from aryê, the Hebrew word for lion — bold, fierce, and protective. The lion carries the weight of history: leadership, strength, and fearlessness, embodied by the Lion of Judah and the Maccabees, who stood as protectors of their people. We carry that history with us in everything we do.