One of the speakers at ST13 Newcastle, our conference-exhibition in the autumn, was Danie Adendorff of Loughborough University. Here’s an update on the masters degree (MSc) course in security management; and his own work.
Danie Adendorff is pleased that the October intake for the security management distance learning MSc was a record. Professional Security asked what was the background of those applying; ‘very diverse’ replies Danie. That’s been true, going back a dozen years or more to Danie’s predecessor’s time, Tom Mulhall; course-takers are from home and abroad, people already working as security managers, and leavers from the police and armed forces, who are looking to private security as a second career and seek some academic qualification. Danie adds that about 40 per cent of the new intake are from the armed forces, suggesting it’s due to the Army’s retrenchment.
The security management courses – you can also do a one-year diploma or certificate – are distance-learning, which is not the same, Danie points out, as e-learning. You do the course part-time, taking two or three years over the MSc. The tutor is at the end of a phone or email, and you attend the uni for study days. Loughborough is quite a sporty university; on a weekday afternoon as you queue to go through the barrier at the gatehouse, you can see young men playing tough rugby. (Pictured is sculpture on campus.) England cricketers practice there when not playing or on tour; and England’s rugby league world cup squad trained there in October. Danie is based in the Business School, and like some and unlike other unis offering courses to security managers, who might come at private security from a criminological angle. The Loughborough courses have been re-written, Danie reports. New are modules on aviation security; and crime investigation, for private investigators.
To take the investigation module – one of two you have to take out of four in your second year of the MSc. While we don’t know yet what the SIA will ask of investigators for them to apply for an investigator’s licence, Danie suggests what Loughborough offers will be far more than the SIA requirement for an ‘accomplished investigator’. He gives the example of crime scene management, and forensics for security personnel. In other words, forensic science is not just something for the police; any security manager can use it, for internal investigations: for instance drug and alcohol workplace testing; or tests of hand-writing, or fingerprints on documents. That said, the security officer is often the first on the scene of a crime. You do not want him to literally trample on evidence, or (even if trying to do good) contaminate it. Briefly, there’s Locard’s principle of exchange; every contact leaves a trace. That implies you have to know where the evidence is; and ensure its integrity; and continuity; and create an audit trail, whether by using plastic gloves or bags to preserve evidence. Yes, in more serious cases, the police will attend the scene, and take responsibility, but, as Danie says: “From a security management point of view, preservation is everything.” To sum up, whatever the evidence you are gathering and storing – whether DNA, or data in the cloud – there are rules to follow, to keep that evidence, and prove that you are. As for aviation security, Danie describes it as just too little for a stand-alone postgraduate degree; but too much for a module. But, he adds, Loughborough has succeeded in creating an aviation security module, covering risk and physical and information security.
If you are someone wondering whether education can help you get on as in private security; or if you are doubting that you have the time and energy to fit in study with your work and life, Danie, a former South African policeman and investigator, has been there. He came to the UK and worked in London as a security officer; he took the Loughborough masters degree. He’s hoping to work more on his PhD, about ‘deviance in a cyber-community’. That subject will not come as a surprise to those who heard him speak at Security TWENTY 13 at Newcastle in September, when he described how, in cyberspace, anyone can be a ‘hoodie’. In short, where’s the social contract online? In the real world, who would dream of exposing themselves on the street. On social media, hiding their true identity, people can (and some do) circulate naked pictures of themselves. Or: someone who would never steal a disc of music from a shop switches on his computer and downloads that same music, from a pirate website. Danie’s question; what has happened to the social contract, that we take it for granted to behave and not do what is agreed by society to be criminal or simply too risky (and here Danie means bank traders, using other people’s money)? The social contract matters not only to what we do on the internet, but life. Danie gives the example of teenagers who kill themselves, having been bullied online.
You can contact Danie through the Loughborough website – http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sbe/pmdc/areas/security/
