Facebook and the social media company’s central London offices were the hosts for the summer quarterly seminar for the UK chapter of the international security management association ASIS. The members were the guests of Mike Croll, Chris Jones CPP and Dave Gregory.
The afternoon seminars – that both allow time into the early evening for networking and for managers to put in a good morning’s work – regularly attract a goodly audience, usually at London corporate venues. If members made a particular effort to make the summer event, to see what life is like inside Facebook, they had to sign a non-disclosure agreement on a tablet before going through access control at one of the buildings at Rathbone Square, a stone’s throw from the Tottenham Court Road end of Oxford Street.
One of the UK vice-chairmen, Mike Hurst began with chapter business, including the new ASIS qualification – Associate Protection Professional. That’s to be trialled in the autumn, and aimed at relative beginners and newcomers to the security sector, to start them in certification and professionalisation before the ASIS CPP (Certified Protection Professional) and other qualifications for more experienced managers. On the social side, a joint members’ event is planned with the Security Institute, and Association of Security Consultants (ASC), as is a party to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the UK chapter. On a vote, the membership agreed that the UK board could increase the number of the board to nine (the limit was seven).
Another vice-chairman Graeme Bassett introduced the charity ASIS UK is supporting, PTSD Resolution. Any ASIS UK member including family can make free and confidential use of the charity’s counselling services around the country, whether because they are suffering from trauma after serving in the armed forces, or civilian trauma such as a road accident.
Chris Aldous was the first speaker proper, giving three examples from his career as a security designer from his career on ‘security as an enabler’, working with architects and engineers. His summing up: don’t trust developers to design security into places. If you fail to plan with security in mind, you are likely to increase vulnerability; which ultimately will cost more money, to secure the site. But remember that not every threat can be mitigated by design; good design can reduce impacts.
Pictured is the next speaker, Rich Stevens, director of education for the UK chapter, who went through the idea of enterprise security risk management (ESRM) that ASIS globally has been championing since 2016, for the identifying of threats at the earliest point so that they can be mitigated, and for sharing the responsibility between security and business leadership. ESRM is a term being forwarded by US-based ASIS, whether in guidelines, qualifications and tools for applying ESRM, to reflect industry best practice.
Also on the theme of ‘security as an enabler’, Steve Kenny of Axis Communications, ASIS UK’s industry liaison man, spoke about adding value through video security systems, whether for ‘smart cities’ for traffic management, or biometrics for business use, such as in betting shops to identify self-referred ‘problem gamblers’ who however return to a betting shop branch.
After a tea break, David Bilson, the former Met Police borough commander now head of security and visitor services at the British Museum, spoke as asked by his near neighbour, ASIS UK chairman Dave Clark, the head of security at the Crick Institute at St Pancras. David Bilson ranged over the history of the Museum in Bloomsbury, its special objects such as the Rossetta Stone, and the site’s popularity to visitors – by the tens of thousands each day, at times requiring crowd control on a sports stadium scale.
