A thank you to people doing UK security for their resilience and counter-terrorism work was given by John Allan, chairman of retailer Tesco and London First, at the business body’s Global Resilience Summit 2016.
He ended his introduction to the event at the QE2 Centre in Westminster (pictured; part of the audience) on a personal note, before handing over to Sir David Veness, the former senior Metropolitan Police man now the chairman of the advisory board to the security and resilience network of London First.
John Allan said that he was aware of the enormous commitment and skill that goes into fighting terrorism in the UK, by police and security, ‘because I think frankly in this country we do a fantastic job of detecting, deterring and disrupting terrorist threats. And I think the sadness for all of you involved in this work is that your triumphs are invisible to the general public; while if something goes wrong which it may occasionally do, people will be very quick to criticise.’
While many of the speakers and subjects were from London, they included Christian Sommade, Executive Director, French High Committee for Civil Defence; and Dr Bilal Hamad, former Mayor, City of Beirut.
Topics included ‘maintaining trust and reputation’; training exercises; the risk of firearms attacks in cities, as in Paris, Brussels and Orlando, as reviewed by Richard Bond, senior consultant at engineering consultancy Arup; and cyber. The session heard about the new National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), and was chaired by Edward Lucas, Senior Editor at The Economist, whose book Cyberphobia was reviewed in the October 2016 print issue of Professional Security magazine.
More words and pictures in the December 2016 print issue of Professional Security.
The security and resilience network of London First is running more of its breakfast briefings for business security people; visit the London First website.
