Journalist

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Hailey Lynne McKeefry has spent more than 23 years writing about technology and business. She began her career as an editor at such periodicals as Macintosh News, EBN, and Windows Magazine. After more than 16 years as a freelance journalist, she has written about a broad variety of technology topics, with a focus on security, storage, healthcare, and SMBs. Living in the heart of the Silicon Valley, Hailey has written for many top business-to-business publications and Websites including Information Week, CRN, eWeek, Channel Insider, Channel Pro, Redmond Channel Partner, Home Office Computing, and TechTarget. She graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz with a BA in literature.
June 11, 2013

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ANSI Approves Physical Asset Protection Standard

Every organization is trying to balance the need for physical security and doing business effectively.

To that end, ASIS International has released its latest ANSI standard, Security Management Standard: Physical Asset Protection.

“All organizations face risk,” said Allison Wylde, co-chair of the Physical Asset Protection Technical Committee and course leader of MSc Project Management, London Business School, in a press release. “The challenge is to first determine how much risk is acceptable and second how to cost-effectively manage risk to meet strategic and operational objectives. This standard helps practitioners determine the appropriate balance between these competing demands.”

The standard, which was developed by a global, 80-member Technical Committee, aims to present a “provides a comprehensive management approach to identify, apply, and manage physical security measures in order to safeguard an organization’s assets — its people, property, and information,” according to ASIS. Further, it reaches beyond these tangible assets to also address the less-considered intangible assets, such as brand, and reputation.

The new standard creates a framework to establish, implement, operate, monitor, review, maintain, and improve physical protection systems. The standard, which has been in development for more than three years, started as members of ASIS UK drafted an asset protection standard based on the management system framework described in the ANSI/ASIS SPC.1-2009, standard title Organizational Resilience: Security, Preparedness, and Continuity Management Systems — Requirements with Guidance for Use, ASIS said.

Lack of resilience, or the ability to respond to unexpected events, is a critical aspect of success in today’s business climate. “Organizations need to manage the risks of undesirable and disruptive events,” said Dr. Marc Siegel, co-chair of the Physical Asset Protection Technical Committee and Commissioner of the ASIS Global Standards Initiative in the press release. “A comprehensive management systems approach gives practitioners a management tool to cost-effectively protect an organization’s assets in concert with the organization’s overall mission and business objectives.”

The standard, which can be downloaded through the ASIS website, has identified the hallmarks of an effective proactive management system to provide direction to security managers. To be affective, a variety of elements must be present:

  1. Top management must be committed and willing to lead in developing a Physical Assets Protection policy
  2. The program must establish a comprehensive program that identifies, analyzes, and evaluates risks to tangible and intangible assets
  3. People, procedures, technologies, and equipment must all be integrated to meet the objectives of the system.
  4. The performance of the system must be continuously monitored, measured, and reviewed.

These types of standard promises to allow organizations balance the soft information (such as experience and intuition) with factual data around the risk status of assets. Let us know in the comments section below how your organization handles physical asset protection. Will this type of standard help you move forward in new ways?

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James Willison
James Willison
June 12, 2013 5:18 am

Thank you very much Hailey for highlighting the ANSI ASIS Physical Asset Protection Standard. It offers many helpful approaches for asset protection and Security Risk Management. It indicates the dependence of physical security systems on IT and outlines how to implement these in a secure way. So in many ways it is pretty innovative whilst recommending how to manage more traditional areas – such as lighting, access control and video surveillance with an awareness of cross functional risk. As I have said on many occasions it is a treasure trove of information which many organisations would do well to examine… Read more »

Tony Dobson
Tony Dobson
June 12, 2013 6:06 am
Reply to  James Willison

Fully agree, it’s a great standard that I use all the time and the various standards and guidelines from ASIS was one of the main reasons I joined them.
I’m now part of the team looking at updating the Risk Assessment standard which will be another in-depth but useable procedure.
What has amazed me is the sheer breadth and depth of experience and qualifications of those sitting around the virtual table!

Hailey Lynne McKeefry
Hailey Lynne McKeefry
June 17, 2013 11:47 am
Reply to  James Willison

Thanks, James… This is critical work and deserves to be highlighted. And I owe you a thank you. I believe it was one of your comments that put me on the road of delving deeper into this important subject.

Hailey Lynne McKeefry
Hailey Lynne McKeefry
June 17, 2013 11:48 am
Reply to  Tony Dobson

, I’m so glad to know this work is being done. What would you say is the most challenging part of revising this standard? Have you found certain areas where we seem particularly ahead or behind?

James Willison
James Willison
June 17, 2013 12:15 pm

Hailey. You are welcome. I am glad to be of help in drawing attention to this most significant document. I am convinced that the ANSI ASIS PAP Standard is truly “ground breaking” in many ways. It is the first to consider Enterprise Security Risk Management in depth and as Tony indicates many senior security professionals from across the Information and Physical Security space contributed to the content. For this reason it deserves far greater attention than it has received so far. I am thankful that we have been able to promote it here and at various events but sadly people… Read more »

Tony Dobson
Tony Dobson
June 18, 2013 3:59 am

@Hailey, its early days yet, the team has just been put together. A real mix of security professionals from all over the world, an inner circle doing the hard work but all members commenting and advising. Really can’t think of a better way of getting a truly international, high quality and comprehensive standard.
ASIS really is a world leader in this area in my opinion.

Hailey Lynne McKeefry
Hailey Lynne McKeefry
June 28, 2013 6:18 pm
Reply to  Tony Dobson

It sounds like a great process… nothing better than smart people with lots of experience getting together as a way to yield results. I look forward to seeing the results.

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