Why Security Fails: How the academic view of security risk management can be balanced with the realities of operational delivery

by msecadm4921

Author: Dr Peter Speight

ISBN No: 9780 9537636 6

Review date: 29/03/2024

No of pages: 251

Publisher: Protection Publications

Publisher URL:
http://www.securitas.com/Global/United%20Kingdom/Why%20Security%20Fails%20Advert.pdf

Year of publication: 11/09/2012

Brief:

As mentioned in our August print issue, Securitas' Director of Security Risk Management Dr Peter Speight has brought out a book, titled Why Security Fails. It’s practical, informed and thought-provoking, writes Mark Rowe. 

We want to be forearmed. That’s why we pay for security guards and electronic security products. Why then do we keep being surprised and overwhelmed by crime and other security breaches, and disasters? Dr Peter Speight takes on some basic questions – can an organisation plan for worst case scenarios, and if so, how? Can we measure risks, and assess what to do – and whether the organisation has taken the steps to meet the risks? 
 
Credit to Peter for such a provocative title – and possibly an unsettling one. It’s a coincidence that the book came out while G4S could not meet their London Olympics guarding contract. Numerous people said then that they could see the shortfall coming. If that’s so, what went wrong? As a man who’s worked for guarding rivals of G4S – Reliance Security, taken over by his current employers Securitas – Peter is too polite to be drawn on the timing of his book and whether G4S and indeed the Games organisers LOCOG could learn from it. But the Games are only the most obvious example of security falling short, with damage to reputation. 
 
What makes this book fresh is that from the start Peter doesn’t write about what people ought to do, but faces the real world – businesses ‘take a gamble’ on security, they make the excuse ‘it [a break-in? a flood or fire or bomb?] will never happen here’. Security has to accept that it has to work with, and influence, an organisation’s culture: “Resistance to wearing ID badges, lack of compliance with access management procedures and clean desk policies, and opposition to security personnel are all indicators that security systems and procedures may have been implemented in the absence of pre-installment security awareness training and orientation.” 
 
A repeated point of Peter’s is that businesses are not anti-security. Who is?! But, people inside and outside the security department confuse real security with the illusion of it. A locked door is no use if it hinders the free flow of information that bright workers expect; visible security (such as CCTV) might only bring the illusion of security – a repeated point of Peter’s. Sites get away with that, if only (as Peter begins his conclusion) more by good fortune than planning. “The man on the gate and the camera on the wall become a visual metaphor for how unsophisticatedly management perceives security.” 
 
As in his interview in the May print issue of Professional Security, Dr Speight is one of the quite few people in UK private security to marry the good parts of the academic (the rigour, the demand for evidence) and the practical (getting things done, when the client wants). This comes out most plainly in the case study chapter, that the Association of Security Consultants among other audiences have heard Peter describe. It’s an unnamed business where Peter risk-assessed and altered both the manned guarding and electronic security – and reduced annual spending on security manpower. That’s an important point, to show that taking more care over security does not mean you have to spend more – quite the opposite, in fact. 
 
Peter closes his well-presented and readable book by mentioning that the likely title of his next book is ‘The Real World of Security and Risk’. For a man who in interview has spoken of how he’s on a journey, having taken security-related qualifications leading to a doctorate, I look forward to seeing that next step. One question I have: is the security management of a site or client merely a mirror of the business overall? Does a slapdash business have slapdash security, an agile business have agile security? As a sign of how useful and important this book is, I can think of numerous people I’d like to hand my copy to.  
 
For details of how to buy the book visit the Securitas website – 
 
http://www.securitas.com/uk/en/News/Securitas-news-in-2010/Securitas-proud-to-sponsor-outstanding-work-on-risk/

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