星空传媒

Given the present level of debate about the nature of security, increasingly-high levels of professional security training (up to and including degree level), Security Industry Authority (SIA) regulation and a myriad of widely-publicised initiatives for enhancing security in both the public and private sectors, it would be reasonable to suppose that the discipline of security is becoming better-understood. Is that really the case, or are we in fact losing track of what at least one type of security is all about?

Many useful concepts and activities are 鈥榝lavour of the month', but they seem to be accompanied by a growing idea that security is somehow solely concerned with maintaining law and order, upholding public order and morality or fighting terrorism.

To the Ministry of Defence staff officer, security is all about international defence and peacekeeping. To the Security Service officer it is concerned with combating espionage, sabotage, subversion and, increasingly, terrorism. To the police officer, it centres on the protection of society and the individual by enforcement of the law and the investigation of crime. All of these are approximate lay definitions and will doubtless attract criticism, but I suggest that they are broadly true.

Protecting the bottom line

What of corporate security, though? It is about none of these things. True, it may relate to many of them, and may use some of them as tools, but the mission of corporate security is, simply, the protection of the company's bottom line. Of course, every right-thinking person and organisation is concerned with the protection of human life, enforcing national laws and protecting morality. However, corporate Security Departments do not exist with those purposes as primary goals.

Does it matter? Well, yes, it does. The corporate security world is not a priority for the Regulator, the Home Office or the Association of Chief Police Officers. It is being looked after by reputable private sector training companies, the professional associations, forward-thinking companies and, of course, by market forces - but that is not enough.

Elsewhere, there is extensive 鈥榤ission-creep'. Private companies are using Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) to provide security at filling stations. Community Safety Accreditation Schemes are offering 鈥榯raining' and accreditation for security staff, although no-one seems to understand how this is to relate to SIA licensing.

Use is being made of the expression 鈥榯he wider police family' - a phrase that is not only unhelpful, but potentially dangerous. Security officers are often First Aid specialists or paramedics, front line fire-fighters or extinguisher maintainers. No-one refers to them as part of the wider Health Service, or of the wider Fire Service community.

Unless the police service and the security profession co-operate as equal partners, vast potential synergies will remain unexploited - to the detriment of both law enforcement and national security.

鈥淲hatever may be said about exchange of information between the public and private sectors, the flow is largely one-way traffic. In truth, the private sector is offered mere crumbs of the intelligence available to the police, at both the national and local levels. Listen for the knee-jerk cries, that it can be no other way鈥︹��

Policing is as much like corporate security as are UN peacekeeping operations. That is to say, both police officers and soldiers bring many useful attributes to the security function, but it is a different function. There are overlaps - international defence slides into domestic anti-terrorism, then into domestic law enforcement, thus into the protection of people and property, financial markets, business risk and fraud investigation. That said, they are not all one and the same skills set.

Nor is there any level playing field here. When the police enter the security arena, they do so with resources denied to the private sector. Private sector employers do not have as ready access to certain aspects of pre-employment screening as have the police, and they do not have public funding. Whatever may be said about exchange of information between the public and private sectors, the flow is largely one-way traffic. In truth, the private sector is offered mere crumbs of the intelligence available to the police, at both the national and local levels. Listen for the knee-jerk cries, that it can be no other way.

Protecting the public?

I have no desire to enter the debate surrounding PCSOs. Every time I think they are simply providing second-class policing on the cheap, I remind myself that my father - a rural community policeman in the original sense of the words - worked much as these people do.

PCSOs undoubtedly have a real role to play, but I am left with concerns that the intelligence-gathering capabilities of the local police officer, and his early-career exposure to the community (before he becomes a specialist), are now gone. The public is left with an interface wherein lies a lower level of law-enforcement expertise.

Anecdotally, PCSOs do not appear to be as carefully-selected or as well-trained as members of a good in-house security team, and yet they are accorded a quasi-police status for the benefit of public perception.

In-house security staff have some justification for feeling that they are viewed by the public sector as second-class citizens, unable even to carry batons or handcuffs, not because it is unnecessary (as it usually is) but because they have not been vetted and trained by the police. The same body whose members are not involved in corporate security, and so cannot possibly be expected to understand that function. The security protection of business is only a peripheral activity for Government and both the national security and law enforcement agencies.

Meanwhile, the role of the SIA - a body that many commentators allege has a deliberate policy of not recruiting security professionals into its ranks (the SIA denies this, but the fact remains that they have none) - is being brought into question. There are cogent (if perhaps premature) opinions that the Authority is constructing unworkable schemes for the regulation of sectors that do not need regulation, ignoring sectors that do need it and that it has groped its way towards a potentially-unwise but conveniently-timed Approved Contractor Scheme.

Imagine a medical or legal regulatory body with no medical or legal people in it! No regulation without representation... and consultation is not representation

Imagine a medical or legal regulatory body with no medical or legally-qualified people in it! No regulation without representation... and consultation is not representation. Perhaps it is time to stand back from a regulatory process that seems to have acquired its own momentum, and to ask what its future goals will be. As a supporter of both industry regulation and, in the abstract, a regulatory body, I intend that as a constructive remark, however it may be taken.

An illusion is being created that the Government is actually doing something about security. That is true, but only to a very limited extent. The protection of public spaces is being enhanced by the use of CCTV and uniformed non-policemen. Acts of Parliament give the police and other public bodies extended powers to deal with both terrorism and the welfare of domestic pets.

The fact of the matter is that the powerhouses of our society in industry, business and commerce are not only being left to get on with security as best they can, but at the same time they are being denied many of the tools accorded to bodies with lower standards of recruitment, less training and no understanding of corporate life. Even the exchange of intelligence is being left to whichever 鈥榦ld boy' network is accessible for the key individuals involved.

Lack of a coherent approach

The end result is a lack of any coherent and unified approach to public-private sector co-operation on corporate security issues that affects huge swathes of essential services and supplies. Beyond the Critical National Infrastructure set-up, little is in place. I have worked in the intelligence and security communities in both the public and private sectors, and also spent time with a foot in each camp. The disconnect between the two areas is as staggering as it is unjustified.

We need to stop talking and writing about security as if it begins with closer working with the police and ends with regulation, and rid ourselves of this notion that anyone outside the public sector is a supplicant at the table.

The debate needs to be much wider. Its present level is not adequate. If security in the UK - in the very widest sense - is to be joined-up, it must be built on a partnership, on equal terms, between all of the professionals who practice it. The $64,000 question is: How are we going to make this happen?