What should a chief of security, or a chief of information security, look like? That is a question posed in the August 2019 print issue of Professional Security magazine. Among the questions arising from that; what sort of background should the CSO or CISO have; does the man or woman need to have a grounding in security at all, if it’s more important to speak to the board or to comply with regulations, or to meet a budget? Given that information security and cyber people are in such short supply and are hard to recruit and retain – it’s generally acknowledged that banks and other big corporates can pay a premium for cyber talent, which is not an option for small firms or the public sector – do employers have to be flexible, or resign themselves to being short-staffed on the cyber side?
We feature talks at IFSEC where heads of security described their work and wider questions such as how to gain the attention of the board, and non-security staff alike, for example by broadcasting a clear and consistent message, and setting out a ‘security culture’.
We also bring you an interview from the SIA’s offices at Canary Wharf in London Docklands, of the chief executive Ian Todd, who took over at the Security Industry Authority from Alan Clamp in the spring. While (like Alan Clamp) Ian Todd has come from another regulator (and another regulator is where Alan Clamp has gone to), the new SIA chief points to a front-line background as a paramedic, that gives him insight into what it can be like for the SIA-badged security officer or door superviser. As we find, the security officers doing police-like patrols around Canary Wharf are a sign of how far the private security sector has come, in part thanks to regulation since the 2000s; but what next for the Authority, that costs £30m a year?
We continue our major three-part series on security inside Hinkley Point C, the EDF Energy new-build nuclear power station on the north Somerset coast. We introduce the company with the security contract, G4S and hear from supplier and client about how important the relation is between the two, to keep providing an effective service at what will become a critical piece of national infrastructure but which – until it starts producing electricity – is a large construction site, with all the security and safety challenges that brings.
We look back at the Security TWENTY exhibition-conference at Manchester on July 2, and look forward to the pair of ST events in Ireland, in Belfast and Dublin, in early September.
Plus magazine MD Roy Cooper’s gossip page, for distributors and manufacturers; pages of new products and services; four pages of ‘spending the budget’; and news coverage of all the branches of private security in the UK and Ireland; physical, electronic, manned guarding and cyber.
If you would like a print copy of the magazine, email [email protected].
Picture by Mark Rowe; Darren Carter, head of security for Edwardian Hotels London, speaking during IFSEC 2019 at London Excel.
To read online past issues of the magazine, visit the ‘magazine‘ part of the website.
