Sometimes, it’s a good thing to stop and take perspective – about how we have become so tied to our mobile devices, and the internet (how did we manage before them?!) It was one of the things I chatted about with some of the exhibitors and visitors to the first ST event of the year, in Nottingham last month (see from page 18). One exhibitor reminisced about his first car phone, bolted into his car. Before mobiles, if you took a day or half a day out of the office anywhere, even far from a fax machine (!), you might be wanted back at base, but if you were out of contact, people would shrug – it was the norm – and write a letter. Mobiles and the internet have speeded up the pace that we do business. Five working days for a reply? ‘Five minutes,’ someone said to me in reply. Security cannot stand aloof from change any more than any other sort of work. The coming of cyber – to bundle it up in a word – means that we run the risks that Mike Gillespie has again raised neatly (page 56). Even security products can be hacked. And the need to physically secure objects and people doesn’t go away.
Change is not always for the worse. I was glad of Ian Kirke’s article about CSAS, the Community Safety Accreditation Scheme (page 80). The logo the scheme started with was unfortunate – one reader likened it to two sofas fighting – and it might not have become quite as widespread as was thought near 15 years ago when it began. But, it’s there. And what I found so interesting and telling was Ian’s own change, from sceptical police inspector to now a trainer giving training to, among other people, police officers – you’ll recall an article I did about three years ago, of his investigation training for Hertfordshire Police. It takes years or even decades for the experience that cops have on patrol to inform how they relate to private security once they rise in rank and, behind a desk, come across the likes of CSAS. You cannot easily measure some of what Ian has written about; how police feel about granting police-style powers to guard forces and others. It’s easier to point to where it’s happening, as he does.
This month we’ve majored on universities. To put them in perspective, having myself just passed a (largely online) master’s degree course – and that reminds me that I never did find out if it’s a master’s, or a masters; perhaps it doesn’t matter? – universities have grown hugely in our time, and foreign students have come, by their thousands on each campus. All need protecting. Talking of foreign, I was interrupted by answering an email about a friend coming to see the Lithuania-England football match at Wembley this month (pictured). From Lithuania, I mean. Who would have dreamt of such things 30 years ago? Alerts to personal devices, to say when the next bus is coming, or to warn of an active shooter (page 41)? A thing called a Yik Yak app (page 43)?! As I took a swim in the University of Nottingham pool before the ST17 Midlands event the other week, I felt how much I’d love to have my student years now, instead of when I did. But there’s no invention that lets you do that.
