This is the second article in a series titled “Developing a Security Mindset.” The theme of this blog will be to write stories that highlight the human, social and/or organizational issues that can cause security to deteriorate or go awry, either in your company, your building or your personal life.
The title of this post is “Think Like a Criminal – or a Terrorist.” That’s how we should be thinking when doing a security assessment of your building, company, or private residence. You might think we can’t do that because we’re not criminals, but believe me, we can. We all can. Criminals are not rocket scientists. Whatever ways they devise to breach your defenses, we can think of those ways too – we just have to give it a little practice.
When doing any security assessment of a building, the three basic areas we examine are the perimeter, the exterior of the building and the interior of the building. Within those three areas will sometimes be “Intervention Zones.” Outside, in the perimeter area you might have speed bumps, guard booths with wooden arms that go up and down to control traffic, bollards, etc. At the exterior of the building you might have card readers for access control of the front door or a doorman, etc. Inside you might have a front desk person, turnstiles, etc. Also, there is the concept of “Concentric Circles,” or “Concentric Layers of Protection.” That just means your security countermeasures get more robust and intense the closer you get to the critical assets you need to protect.
So, all that being said, how would we take a step back, look at all this, and say to ourselves, “If we were a criminal, or a terrorist, how would we breach this security?” Keep in mind that criminals and terrorists usually follow a pattern. So if you want to know what they will do in the present or the future, just look at what they’ve done in the past. They will probably stick to that pattern or strategy. Like we said, it’s not rocket science.
Whenever we do a physical security assessment of a large building, we always ask some staff member who has worked or lived in the building for a long time the following question, “If you had to gain unauthorized access to the building do you think you could do it?” They almost always say “Yes.” Then we just ask them how they would do it and we tell our client to close that hole in his/her security.
Now, another question that arises when we do that is “Why didn’t that person feel empowered to simply fix that weak spot in the security of their building themselves?” Why didn’t they take action? Why weren’t they proactive?
We have an answer for that but you’re going to have to wait until our next blog post in October. But just remember what we said in last month’s post: “Things that are easy to do are also easy not to do.”
If you want to communicate with us as we proceed don’t hesitate to drop us a line at: [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you. We’ll also do our best to answer any questions you may have related to security, safety, emergency management and/or investigations.
