Author: Ross Johnson
ISBN No: 9781 4665 1290 0
Review date: 24/04/2024
No of pages: 274
Publisher: CRC Press
Publisher URL:
http://www.crcpress.com
Year of publication: 08/07/2013
Brief:
Anti-terrorism and Threat Response: Planning and Implementation
Anti-terrorism and Threat Response: Planning and Implementation, as the title suggests, takes us more from the set-up of the good guys to how to protect from the bad guys. At once Ross Johnson the Canadian author makes some practical points – querying standards-based security, ‘which suggests that the regulator [he works now in utilities] is now responsible for the security of your facility’. As he adds, if you follow the security standards but those standards are poor and your security is attacked, you can blame the regulator – if that is any consolation. Johnson is a practitioner writing for practitioners: “Terrorists will try to terrorise, and my job is simply to make sure they don’t do it at any of the facilities that I am responsible for protecting.” The book goes into threat vulnerability assessment; physical and electronic security measures; watching for the terrorists watching you; and response planning, whether you get a phoned-in bomb threat or an executive is being followed before a kidnap. He argues for random anti-terrorism measures (RAMs), unpredictable changes in your ‘control regime’, whether car searches, patrol patterns or ID badge checks. Johnson makes the subtle point that good RAM should be visible (it puts off a terrorist or indeed other criminal only if they are doing surveillance), not expensive (or you will come under pressure not to use it) and nor is it recommended in a ‘low-threat environment’ (‘it will only serve to irritate your colleagues’).
In that case, make it a one day a month exercise, to keep guards sharp and regulators happy. This book is full of sense – keep your response plan up to date; work off your electronic copy, but keep a paper copy at home and in the office and guardhouse. What if, come an attack, your computer network goes down? Consider using an iPad, with camera and access to maps. He ends by avoiding predictions but notes our fixation with the threat to our critical infrastructure – our electricity, clean water and computers. Might it be that terrorists (in the west) also find those services critical, and would rather not attack them?! As Johnson makes plain, terrorism is far from dead, because for one thing it’s a way for countries that spend little on armies to take on the US and others that spend billions. A quibble could be that the book is, understandably, aimed more at North American than British readers, though there’s material on the Northern Ireland Troubles; and animal rights protests (‘eco-terrorists’). British security managers may feel well served by such bodies as NaCTSO and CPNI. If you want a book, though, this is a good one: sound, useful and wide-ranging. One aside for instance, a UK case of paying to release a diplomat from 1970s kidnappers in Chile; I thought the UK didn’t do that?!
