Security Threats: How the Risk Landscape is Evolving

The world we live in is an intricate set of geo-political alignments that have a direct effect on the security of every nation.

The complex nature of ‘threat’, both domestic and international, from protest to espionage and terrorism, requires us to understand the current and emerging threats.

Over the last 10 years the concept of threat has changed.

Where the traditional threat has always been perceived as disruption from active shooters through to improvised explosive devices and large scale disruption, the threat is now becoming somewhat more subtle.

Insider threat

National espionage is still present but the real threat for many of our customers is now the ‘insider’, the lone wolf or a blended attack from both the cyber and real world scenarios.

The reality is that attacks on businesses and infrastructure can be more damaging when hosted from within, where the security tends to be at its lowest point.

The threat from direct terrorism is still in existence and the fracturing of many traditionally aligned organisations has, in all probability, made the world a more dangerous place.

Due to the changing threat, the challenge for our customers and our sector is to match our delivery, in many cases, to the UK government’s CONTEST strategy.

The need to pursue, prevent, protect and prepare has always been our start point and we focus on our people, giving them the skills to manage a security provision with these principals at the centre and then using technology to support this ability.

The need to understand the general threat is one thing but we also, through our excellent site management structure, work to recognise the specific threat to each customer and deliver a bespoke and specific training and operational output tailored to them.

The threat never disappears but simply changes and evolves and our sector ethos requires us to work in that manner.

The way forward

Whilst the current and emerging threats to our customers are becoming a blend of physical and cyber-based we believe that we must use the same method to defeat any potential for attack or protest.

As a business we have many cyber platforms that allow us to gather and interrogate data to better understand how we can prevent an event to our customers by delivering an effective output.

By taking our ability to gather information, combining it with open and closed source intelligence and being able to disseminate it to our team in real time through smart phones, tablets and systems, we have moved to a more proactive footing and in some cases have been able to defeat a threat even before our customers have known one existed.

There will always be a need for security operatives but the reality is that the skill set of that operator will change.

We believe that the combination of cyber, technology and people will see a higher skill set with increasing focus on technical skills that will truly allow us to give a security officer the relevant information, in real time, to defeat a threat and keep our customers sites, people  and assets safe.

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