Continuing a series on how the private security industry may change due to Covid-19 lockdown pandemic response.
The consultancy Control Risks in its special edition of its otherwise annual ‘Risk Map’ offers various scenarios, some more optimistic than others. One is of a ‘fractured rebound’, whereby some countries are better able to contain and manage COVID-19. The risk consultancy suggests that those will gain a geopolitical edge over those facing intermittent lockdowns. In such a case, major international meetings and events might remain mainly virtual. While not as good as a global rebound, that would be better than ‘prolonged disruption’ that saw international and multilateral meetings postponed indefinitely; political instability; international supply chains disrupted.
In some ways fractured would be worst of all, as it would make for inequalities; some suffering more than others; and virtual meetings, while better than none, may only be a stop-gap. For – to state the obvious – a virtual meeting is not as human as a face to face one. Yet as featured in the July 2020 print issue of Professional Security magazine, many businesses have gone over to remote and virtual working, even while many staff have been furloughed and premises closed – to the public, and altogether. The National Trust, for example, has its head office and properties closed; work goes on.
Security managers and yet more senior managers they report to, having worked through the weeks of setting up remote working and keeping it going, not only have to battle against fatigue, but to consider more strategic questions. With time, even if head offices can be returned to, there may be staff clamour and economic reasons to retain at least some remote working. But what are the office-political and security meanings of such ways of working. It’s one thing to do it when necessary – to be carried through by a ‘Dunkirk spirit’ of common adversity; another for it to be the norm.
How can workplaces build and keep social capital, trusting remote workers not to slack or defraud their employer, let alone do the right thing about not clicking onto phishing emails. Activists have time on their hands, as the Control Risks ‘Risk Map’ points out: and state-sponsored operations are ‘hyperactively targeting the scientific and medical communities researching for a COVID-19 treatment or vaccine’. And: “The geopolitical turmoil the pandemic has sparked will see cyber operations – always inexpensive and easy to deny – spike as a tactic.”
You may say that you are not on activist radar (although the Extinction Rebellion is strikingly wide in its choice of targets – HS2, high street fashion, nuclear power, banking, government, anyone that does not take the ‘climate emergency’ as seriously as XR does). That you are not in healthcare, and not of geopolitical interest. In other words, like some spider you can crawl into or under the skirting board. Except that just as you may be caught in the cordon thrown up after an act of terror, once a staffer clicks on a phishing email, you’re hacked and consequences are out of your control.
In the traditional until mid-March 2020 workplace – factory, call centre, bank hall and vault, supermarket and warehouse – had formal and informal methods of keeping order, preventing staff theft, and equally keeping staff safe from risks – of fire, flood, of being trapped or tempted by outsiders into collusion into carrying out fraud. Those methods were technical – CCTV, access control, fire door alarms; physical, maybe searches after a shift; and personnel, vetting of job applicants.
Can any oversight, or training, done remotely make up for face to face advice and natural surveillance of colleagues spotting odd and suspicious behaviour, such as working late or accessing restricted rooms or turning up at work in a big car they couldn’t afford with their salary, all ‘red flags’ suggesting they have their hand in the till. To return to that Control Risks idea of a ‘fractured rebound’; if a warehouse is part of a business’ supply chain, it’s not much use a loss prevention department working from home remotely, if goods are leaking out of the proverbial or literal back door.
Loss prevention specialists in retail, already cut in numbers, have had to adapt years before the pandemic, to using data analytics to watch for outliers, storing performing particularly poorly, and to focus attention on suspicions, rather than scattergun scarce resources on all stores or branches. The same method might be called for, to guard against fraud; but how well that method apply, when each call agent is individually working from home? If home working remains after lockdown, even in part – expecting workers only to come into an office three or four days of a working week – it may require new thinking of what constitutes ‘home’ and ‘workplace’.
Click here for part six, new ways of working.
