89% of Brits Favour Increased Use of CCTV, Research Reveals

At IFSEC International Vanderbilt announced the findings of a major European study to discover what security issues really matter to people and to businesses.

One finding of Vanderbilt’s research was that 59% of people surveyed in the UK were worried about a potential terror threat – a marked increase on the year before amid worrying developments in the Middle East.

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack  64 % of those questioned in France were worried about the terror threat, with a similar proportion (62%) of those in Germany feeling the same way.

In this context it’s perhaps unsurprising – despite widespread concern about giving government’s the architecture for a Big Brother-style surveillance state – that almost nine in 10 (89%) of those surveyed in the UK favoured increased use of CCTV, despite the country already having more cameras per person than anywhere else in the world. This overwhelming level of support clearly shows a preference in people’s mindset for prioritising safety over privacy.

Moving away from a domestic environment, their research also examined breaches to major businesses. Perhaps suprisingly, potential cyber attacks were less concerning to businesses than physical attacks. Nearly four times as many UK businesses are more concerned about physical breaches than a potential cyber attack. Despite the attention ‘cyber terrorists’ are afforded in the media UK businesses are still primarily concerned with physical threats – even though the number of cyber attacks soared by 48% in 2014 and traditional crimes have been falling steadily for two decades.

Vanderbilt’s CEO Joseph Grillo spoke of the research’s importance. “This side of the business will always be crucial just because of how fast the industry changes,” he said.

“What Vanderbilt are trying to do is to manage the debate between privacy and security. When I first started in this industry 20 years ago, you wouldn’t see CCTV cameras in a public street.”

Vanderbilt recently completed the acquisition of Security Products from Siemens.

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