‘Signal and noise’ is the cover topic of the May 2018 print issue of Professional Security magazine. It’s the latest in our look at social media – how it’s at the same time something the security manager like any other manager in business or any organisation has to keep an eye on; and a tool that can be used to aid and make sense of the job of security management.
We report on a speaker at the recent Security and Counter Terror Expo (SCTX) at London Olympia who set out how the sheer amount of tweets and social media generally after a newsworthy incident – whether man-made or a natural disaster or extreme weather – can be so overwhelming that a corporate response may be to simply switch it off and disregard it. This would be a mistake or a pity, we heard; because in the hours – a couple of days at most – that an incident is alive on social media, the reputation of a business and its share price can be harmed, by social media comment, especially if ignored or responded to insensitively. Besides, social media can be a source of good intelligence for response to an incident, or even images and video useful for an investigation after; let alone something to manage if – as during pre-Christmas panics in London’s West End – an incident is blown out of all proportion into an alert thanks to re-tweeting of inaccurate info.
To read the issue online, visit the ‘magazine‘ part of this website. If you prefer a print copy, or you just like having your cake and eating it, subscribe to Professional Security Magazine for more than one year and take advantage of our savings offers.
Also newsy in May, we look at drones; the general data protection regulation (GDPR) that updates data protection law in the UK and across the European Union, from this month; and Project Servator, launched as a London-wide policing tactic to counter hostile reconnaissance by terrorists and other criminals; we were there at the deployment in Parliament Square, and indeed an earlier gathering of those officers, at the Tower of London (picture by Mark Rowe; Met mounted officers).
Plus our regular contributors, magazine MD Roy Cooper’s page of industry gossip, Una Riley (recalling the near 20 years so far of what’s now the Worshipful Company of Security Professionals) personal safety and weapons awareness trainer Steve Collins (on situation awareness) and Jim Gannon (regretting the drop in police investigation skills), and four pages of ‘spending the budget’ and new products and services. We report also on the recent NSI Summit.
