Now landing on desks is the July 2020 print edition of Professional Security magazine. For a second month we cover how the private security sector is responding to the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic dislocation as a result; and feature things that have been going on regardless of the lockdown.
In the June 2020 edition we asked what was in store for the video surveillance sector as Surveillance Camera Commissioner Tony Porter’s term as industry regulator was ending, without any sign of a successor named by the Home Office. We now report on Tony Porter among other speakers during IFSEC webinars that ran in lieu of the physical exhibition; but he was unable to give any details of what or who might follow him – or of what that meant for all the (with volunteers’ help) work on training and sector standards.
Every sort of life that requires face to face contact has been affected or halted altogether by coronavirus. For example, education. We report on universities – security officers being just about the only people still at work on campus – and how a student accommodation provider has responded to the pandemic, in terms of physical protection and more generally for the well-being of students and staff – a sign of the general trend in security in higher education, where security people have to do more than physically secure people and premises, but seek to provide a safe environment.
As non-essential retail began to re-open on Britain’s high streets, it was a moot point whether those streets would ever look the same, as chains had been suffering commercially even before the enforced shuttering. We hear from a business crime reduction partnership man that BCRPs could well suffer besides the retailers that fund partnerships – and that government, whether councils or police and crime commissioners (PCCs) ought to step in, rather than see BCRPs fall.
While this is traditionally the time of year for industry gatherings – notably IFSEC, and including Professional Security’s own Security TWENTY exhibitions around the UK – organisers have sought to fill the gap with webinars. For instance, the information security sector show Infosecurity Europe ran a week of webinars. We offer you a digest of what chief information security officers (CISOs) had to say, whether about protecting intellectual property, handling a cyber incident, how to do ‘more with less in your department, and whether the carrot or stick approach is best when it comes to tackling phishing emails that so typically lead to data breaches.
Despite the great changes due to Covid-19, fundamentals remain, as set out in the June 2020 edition; security people still have to respond to customer needs, and look to inform and better themselves. Indeed, for those furloughed, lockdown has been a chance to give some time to self-improvement. We speak to Paul Lawton-Jones of the Birmingham-based company Mercury Training, who’s seeing such a demand for courses that he’s seeking security supervisers and managers who want to switch to become trainers.
Plus all the regulars such as Roy Cooper’s industry gossip, pages on manned guarding, and ‘spending the budget’, and four pages of new products and services. If you’d like to see a copy of the print magazine with a view to subscribing, email [email protected].
Photo by Mark Rowe.
