Pre-covid, Mark Rowe wrote some surveys of private security by sector: such as oil and gas, retail loss prevention, and campuses. This year he intends to survey again. First, corporate security.
And first, the clothing. Once, the security manager had no difficulty fitting into the corporate culture, as expressed outwardly in costume in common. Whether the civil service, the City of London or other business – maybe not academia, where lecturers might show off by their freedom of thought by wearing their shirts open – the security manager already dressed to fit. Having typically entered the police or military at an early age, discipline had been drummed into him (usually a him), including shoes polished and trousers pressed. Well within a working lifetime, that certainty has gone. Routinely you can see a Conservative Prime Minister pictured without a tie. Arguably the most successful and famed, self-made business man on the planet, Mark Zuckerberg, wears a t-shirt.
Pockets of the old dress code remain, as indeed followed by Zuckerberg; to formal dinners, when giving evidence to the United States Senate. Mike Croll in his book The Rise of Security, in the chapter about his time at Facebook, remains the best writing about security management inside a big tech firm. The withering of the shirt collar and tie orthodox way of dressing for the workplace means former military and police people no longer have routine access to the signifiers, such as a regimental tie, a neat and subtle way of signalling where you come from, for others to spot, so that you find fellow former cops or military policemen or whatever, and bond even if you don’t know one another by face or reputation. It’s also meant some mental readjustment for the former uniformed services man, who now is free to wear chinos to the office – or maybe even feels required to, for fear of sticking out.
In the foyer, formal wear has not died. On a wet weekday in winter, walk around central London and you can see corporate security officers with radio to hand at their side, like a cowboy’s gun in a holster; unlike the wild west, in a dark suit and proper shoes. The building tenants may put their own stamp on that template; at the Bank of America for example, the officers in reception wear red tie and white shirt. Some days it’s a world of difference, in the warm and dry, from only a few yards away, the officer on duty outside, in a grey overcoat, let alone around the corner in high-vis at the loading bay at the ground floor or basement, on the South Bank, in the Square Mile or Canary Wharf. All this matters because it illustrates the three types of corporate security, that may have little in common, not only in look, but outlook; in tasks, let alone pay and conditions, and how the employer views them.
Yet all three are necessary. While 9-11 still looks like being a defining, remembered event of the 21st century like the sinking of the Titanic was for the 20th century, the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, the World Trade Center, on September 11, 2001 was against corporate America, not yet repeated. Less remembered is the 1993 truck bomb that went off in the basement garage of the North Tower, that killed four and that the FBI describes as ‘something of a deadly rehearsal for 9-11’. In other words, the unglamorous, sometimes noisy and perhaps smelly tradesmen’s entrance needs guarding as much as the swing doors and glass atrium; and it’s among the jobs of corporate security, wearing smart-casual like all the rest (but not the door security, front or back of house), to represent the need for guarding, to maintain budget, to see that those guarding are equipped, and present, and effective.
More in the May print edition of Professional Security Magazine.
