A paper on the website of defence and security think-tank RUSI by Dr Hugo Rosemont looks at the importance of public–private engagement on money laundering and cyber security, and the UK’s response to financial crime.
Speaking at RUSI (Royal United Services Institute) in June 2014, Theresa May, the then Home Secretary, emphasised the importance of the partnership between private sector companies and law enforcement to tackling financial crime, preventing money laundering and recovering the proceeds of crime. The result: the formation of the Financial Sector Forum and the creation of the Joint Money Laundering Intelligence Taskforce (JMLIT), a public–private partnership for the national response to financial crime.
While this nascent effort appears to be gaining traction, and the JMLIT is being moved to a permanent footing, it is certainly not the first such initiative.
The paper called for tangible metrics; any public–private security partnership should establish measurable objectives that are co-designed and agreed among all relevant stakeholders from the outset. To avoid duplication and confusion, proper consideration should be given at the outset to how any proposed public–private security initiative will connect to others. The paper welcomed the proposed consolidation of an ‘alphabet soup’ of agencies and initiatives through the new National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), to be launched in October 2016. And public and private sector stakeholders should devote more time to joint consideration of what each party seeks to gain. What does each side mean by partnership?
While it has long been recognised that 85 per cent of the UK’s CNI is owned by the private sector, the operation of the mechanisms established to ensure its security is less well documented. It is now necessary to adopt a broader and deeper understanding of private sector security involvement; private managers of airports and power stations are arguably as much contributors to national security as they are providers of essential services, Hugo Rosemont argues. There are numerous examples of how the private sector has become deeply involved in providing security against diverse, complex and often transnational security risks. It has fulfilled large-scale contracts in areas such as border security, emergency preparedness and Olympic security, among others; indeed, since 9/11, the UK government has funded security contracts to the tune of billions. It seems that few areas of national security strategy are now considered ‘off limits’ for privatisation, he writes.
This paper from RUSI’s Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies considers lessons that can be learnt from previous public–private partnerships, in particular the Cyber-security Information Sharing Partnership (CiSP). The author stresses the importance of establishing measurable objectives that are co-designed and agreed upon from the outset. Too often such partnerships, established in good faith and with undoubted commitment, fade as the initial enthusiasm wanes, staff are reassigned, and those contributing time and resources question the value of their commitment.
As the UK’s JMLIT emerges from its pilot phase, the longevity of this initiative will be challenged as its initial momentum fades. It is therefore critical that the JMLIT draws on the experience of other, similarly important public–private sector security partnerships to anticipate and address the challenges it might face as it matures.
Free download of the 46-page paper at https://rusi.org/publication/occasional-papers/public%E2%80%93private-security-cooperation-cyber-financial-crime.
About the author
Dr Hugo Rosemont is Policy Adviser on Crime, Security, Risk and Safety issues at the British Retail Consortium (BRC). In April 2015, he was awarded his PhD (with King’s College London) with a thesis on the ‘security-industrial complex’ that reassessed the origins, characteristics and consequences of the private sector’s involvement in the counterterrorism aspects of contemporary UK national security strategy. Previously, he served as Policy Adviser (Security and Resilience) to ADS, the UK aerospace, defence and security sector trade body. Visit http://privsec.co.uk/.
