In chemical enterprises, security managers are interested in easy-to-handle and user-friendly decision-support tools, providing them with straightforward information ready for implementation. Therefore, a theoretical conceptualization on how to manage-in a relatively simple way-the prevention and the mitigation of intentionally induced domino effects in a possibly very complex industrial cluster is described in this paper. The theoretical concepts for treating different chemical companies as single industrial area, and how security experts can deal with high-consequence security matters is explained. A case study illustrates a real application of the novel computer-automated tool designed for enhancing security measures at a cluster level. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.