Last month I sat for my first-ever board certification and passed. I am now a Physical Security Professional (PSP) certified by ASIS International, the largest security professional organization in the world. Here are a few things I've learned since coming on board with The Human Intelligence Group in 2013.
1. Crime is not a force of nature. It can be tempting to conceptualize the possibility of crime only in terms of Hollywood representations of teams of master criminals ("TEAMS!" -Basher Tarr). But those guys probably aren't going to rob convenience stores or burglarize apartment complexes. If an organization reasonably anticipates having to keep out Danny Ocean, they need to take steps to do so, but for most folks there are far less elaborate solutions that will make things much safer.
2. If it's everybody's responsibility, it's nobody's responsibility. Security may be part of everyone’s job, but if nobody has specific, clearly-defined security tasks, training, and authority, you can ask five people who is responsible for security and get five different answers. Spoiler: none of the answers will be "Me!"
3. No effort = no security. Good security practices are often fairly intuitive to grasp, which means it's possible to explain good security to a wide audience. HOWEVER, intuitive does not mean easy to implement, and it doesn't mean these things magically happen by themselves.
4. If some security measures are in place and a crime occurs, that doesn't mean that there is no point in having security measures. Invoking a metaphor: if a football player gets a tooth knocked out when he's not wearing a mouthguard, which response makes more sense? A) Have your dentist make you a custom mouthguard, and wear it; or B) stop going to the dentist, because dentists are supposed to protect your teeth and obviously that didn't work. With the right information about what the known dangers are, your dentist can do a lot to help protect your teeth, and a security professional can do a lot to protect you.
There are ways to apply each of these ideas to the current political situation, but that's for a different post.
