Internal collaboration the key to optimum corporate security culture
by Chris Cubbage - Online Editor
I believe the success of security measures will always depend on the skill of the people responsible for developing and implementing security systems. That's why I support the current efforts to professionalise security management.
Jason Brown, Don Williams and a small band of enthusiastic volunteers are in the midst of a program of workshops to determine interest in developing accreditation criteria for security professionals in advance of plans to establish a security professionals register. I urge anyone who occupies a security management or supervisory role, even if it isn’t a full-time responsibility, to become involved with this initiative.
Our national affairs editor Ernie Davitt has some interesting stories in the current issue of ASM (Sep/Oct 2010), particularly in relation to the decrease in credit card fraud which the banking industry says is due to its efforts to prevent criminal activity. However, fraud in relation to online and telephone purchases using credit cards continues to be a challenge for the banking system.
A worldwide fraud cost of $3.5 trillion dollars annually (see Ernie’s piece on the global cost of fraud to business) is a sobering statistic. It should be a stark reminder to any organisation to take this matter seriously.
Looking at all the stories about security threats, the single theme that emerges is that security management within an organisation cannot exist in an isolated bubble, sidelined with facility management or in an OH&S sub-set.
What many of the issues facing security managers today point to is the need to engage collaboratively with business managers across an organisation. How else do they understand the threats and challenges? In the information age where data can be transferred to millions of people in seconds, it doesn’t take much imagination to visualize the threats. But it needs internal dialogue for all threats to be managed successfully by the security professionals charged with the responsibility. Food for thought, I hope.