Phelim Rowe’s ninth annual executive security and close protection technology forum (CPTF) ran in London last week; Mark Rowe (no relation) offers a digest of the Chatham House Rule event.
I made sure to congratulate Phelim on the high quality (again) of his line-up of speakers. The surest sign of a worthwhile event, of course, is that people return each January (Phelim runs similar ones in Washington DC, and Phoenix, Arizona). As that implies, executive protection (EP) is international, as is the forum. Out of several strands of the day that I could digest, I’d like to cover one, that is too seldom addressed. The security sector is good at discussing tech, as indeed is Phelim’s forum – a most useful morning session on technical counter-surveillance measures (TCSM) for example. The sector is not as good at airing what it needs to do, to do its job well, beyond using tech and other security tools (risk assessment, and theories such as situational awareness).
This cropped up early in the day, when a panel of corporate security and related people came to tech and other creative businesses that are ‘transformational’, that pride themselves on ‘failing forward’, taking or even being blithely ignorant of risks. Two issues here arise for the security professional: how to provide security in a business with a culture of risk-taking, and if a security professional has ambitions, whether (and at what stage of their career) should they work for a tech firm, a bank, retailer, logistics firm or whoever?
To sum up, the security professional has to know themselves, and know the field they want to go into, to make (you would hope) a good fit. If the pay is your yardstick, ‘corporate’ is best; yet even inside financial services the cultural difference can be great between a staid, established bank, and a ‘dynamic’, ‘starter’ firm, that is explicitly seeking to ‘disrupt’, to be an Uber for their sector (though firms may not care to be likened to Uber). A ‘disruptor’ company may so young as to not have a literal or metaphorical ‘rule book’, for example for managing business travel risk.
Age, then, matters: of the company and the sector it’s in, and of the executives: the tech-savvy, tech-native CEO may want to post regularly on social media that they have landed in New York (regardless of the potential risk – could that signal to thieves that they can burgle the CEO’s house in Surrey, that they know the location of thanks to other posts?!).
The older and more regulated a business (such as a bank, a petrochemical firm, or nuclear power generator), the more ‘mature’ and disciplined they have to be, as a rule. As for close protection of a CEO, a younger person in a newer tech firm may be more maverick in their ways, and may feel that nothing bad will happen to them. They may resist having close protection at all; or have as little to do with a CP team as possible (and if someone in CP tries to make a case otherwise, they’re fired).
One temptation may be to portray security as a ‘dark art’; to in essence frighten the CEO, and family, into doing as the executive protection contractor says. Neither ‘do as I say and I will pay you’ attitude of a CEO nor the security provider playing the ‘fear card’ allows an honest conversation between security professional and principal.
Besides mastering actual security, and managing people, the bright and ambitious security person has to stay informed about the employment options. If tech appeals, as much for the prospects of international horizons and the young and like-minded colleagues, as the actual work of security, might a start-up be a more satisfying employer than a giant like Amazon? A start-up that may be looking for their first security person once they have 50 or so staff. That security person would have to be an adviser, equally about intellectual property protection (if the start-up’s tech is of use to utilities or other critical national infrastructure, it could attract the attention of the UK official National Protective Security Authority, or indeed espionage agents of foreign powers), or personal safety (staff on their way to and from work should beware of bag and phone snatchers?), or ‘insider risk‘.
More in the March 2024 print edition of Professional Security Magazine.
Photo by Mark Rowe: Kennet and Avon Canal, Bath.
