Horizon scanning is too important not to be done, Prof Martin Gill concluded at the end of this afternoon’s OSPAs thought leadership webinar, the 157th. His panel of two was the emeritus Prof Paul Ekblom, whose chapter on horizon scanning will be part of the latest edition of the Handbook of Security, due to be published in May; and Masseh Tahiry, of Pallas Advisors.
As Ekblom said in his opening statement, reacting to crime problems as they emerge is important; but usually there’s a lag, maybe of years. And retro-fitting security solutions can be clunky. Hence anticipation is vital, in the ‘arms race’ between criminals and security people, each using perhaps the same tech. The security side, Ekblom said, needs to be able to consistently out-innovate criminals, against a background of technological changes which can give opportunities to the criminal side or those doing security.
Horizon scanning is difficult, because there’s no empirical data – the future is not just a projection of past trends, given such things as bitcoin; and drones. As some things you just cannot see coming, you have to think of multiple, ‘plausible’ futures, and plan your response to them. Hence horizon scanning, as Ekblom was involved in for many years working for the Home Office. But, you can use tools in a disciplined way; and draw on theories of crime science, to make horizon scanning more plausible. And watch sci-fi, he added in passing, such as the TV series Black Mirror.
Ekblom, and Masseh Tahiry, spoke of imagination. Masseh Tahiry quoted the famous finding of the 9-11 Commission in the United States after the 2001 terror attacks; that the failure to prevent the terrorists was a failure of the imagination. The goal should not be prediction, he went on; but to explore possible outcomes, and their implications, ‘and what you will do about it’.
He touched on (pardon the coming pun) some drivers of change: frictionless experiences have accelerated over the last couple of years (that is, for covid hygiene reasons); data platforms are innovating with one another; what does inter-operability mean for humans in terms of data privacy? And if and when the internet becomes more personalised, what does that mean for identity risk management?
Questions from the global online audience, as ever, followed. What’s the best approach to horizon scanning? Prof Martin Gill asked. There’s a whole suite of different approaches, Ekblom replied; ‘it’s very much horses for courses’, depending on whether your subject is tech; or society and culture. Masseh Tahiry spoke likewise; staying flexible with frameworks or tools means you cover all angles. Nor, said Ekblom, should horizon scanning be a one-off exercise.
Martin Gill, playing devil’s advocate, asked if prediction can be done at all. Masseh Tahiry had pointed to the billions spent by the big tech firms on research and development, which includes some future scanning. Ekblom made the case for doing scanning, vigorously. He gave drones as an example; you could think of the ways that such a thing could be mis-handled, used by criminals and terrorists ‘with a dirty mind’, to make the future. “We can at least try to keep up with them.”
Masseh Tahiry argued for practitioners to be brought in to horizon-scan with the strategists, to break down the ‘silos’, and to bring in different perspectives. We should appreciate that you won’t get it right; but the intention is to explore different scenarios. He gave a sports league example, given the growth in ‘smart jerseys’ in the arena and worn by athletes, causing a proliferation of data. What though of the risks, given that athletes are creating data, and betting can become more granular; and how to protect that data?
Paul Ekblom offered the idea of the ‘cone of uncertainty’; down the centre, you have ‘business as usual’, besides plausible, alternative futures; and extreme ones; ‘and for all I know some of these extremes will happen’. One possibility he raised was climate change causing a big sea level rise by the year 2100. Extreme risks have been handled in the infrastructure world; such as an oil rig built to take a ‘100 year wave’, which can be quantified according to the statistics of wave patterns.
Given the multiple possibilities, is horizon scanning no more than, in Ekblom’s phrase, ‘pinning a tail on the donkey blindfold’? Or can we scan the future in a more systematic way, at least? This was a more conceptual webinar than most of the previous 156, but amply met the criteria of thought leadership.
Next week
The next OSPAs webinar is next Thursday at an unusual time, 2pm, on artificial intelligence (AI). You can freely sign up to attend at https://theospas.com/thought-leadership-webinars/. And the next OSPAs (Outstanding Security Performance Awards) event is in Dublin, the first Irish OSPAs, on March 30.
Photo by Mark Rowe.
