Now on desks is the January 2022 print edition of Professional Security magazine, that you are free to read (alongside past editions) at the ‘magazine‘ section of the website, as a flip document. When we put the edition together before Christmas, we didn’t know if a midwinter lockdown was about to be ordered for the UK, which made our visits all the more precious, because Professional Security prides itself on getting out and about, taking the pulse of the security industry across the British Isles, to keep readers informed.
Hence we went 18 floors up to the AGM of the UK chapter of the security managers’ association ASIS; and attended BankSec, the annual bank security conference by RBR, both live events in London for the first time since covid struck in 2020. Pictured is the first presentation to the ASIS AGM, by former policeman now consultant specialising in countering threats (physical and online) to public figures, Philip Grindell, of Defuse Global.
Thanks to the wonders of Zoom and other such linking software, we were able to turn our back on the drinks and bites to eat – plentiful and tasty though they were, courtesy of hosts Informa on Blackfriars Road – after the ASIS AGM business proper, to listen in to the start of the annual forecast by the risk consultancy Sibylline, while not able to join them for their in-person drinks, only a couple of miles away.
Another little tradition that we were glad to renew was to attend the AGM of the Institute of Hotel Security Management (IHSM), courtesy of its chair, Darren Carter, to take the picture of members attending, after the meeting, as ever at one of the capital’s many sumptuous hotels, and before crossing the road to a pub to continue discussions more convivially. We round up what the AGM covered, notably a presentation on OSINT (open source intelligence); and the Institute’s effort to offer bursaries, as some backing to members who want to better themselves through taking training.
Professional Security has never been a London-based or -centred publication, and we were in Birmingham for the National Association for Healthcare Security (NAHS) annual conference, which had strikingly little to say about covid. Rather, its AGM and talk more generally was firmly for the future not the past, no matter how demanding and unremitting. Delegates chewed over what a healthcare security specialism ought to look like – but as was freely admitted, it’s in the context of the National Health Service having chopped its security management central function, leaving only the Counter Fraud Authority to take on fraud in the NHS. We feature that also.
Something we were featuring regularly before covid struck was something potentially momentous – the on-street patrolling by security officers, some CSAS-badged, some not, on behalf of councils or, typically, business improvement districts. We visited Halesowen outside Birmingham to meet over a cup of tea their town centre BID and their patrolling ambassador.
As ever, Professional Security aims to offer something to anyone interested in UK and Ireland private security, whether as an installer, manager, consultant or specifier, or just someone who wants to stay up to date about the sector. Want to have a print copy, because you can’t beat folding a page edge to remind you of a relevant article, or because it’s easier to take a screen shot with your phone of an article than do it with the flip-page online magazine? Email your postal address to [email protected].
