Consec, the annual conference of the Association of Security Consultants, ran at the home of English rugby union at Twickenham yesterday. Mark Rowe back at his desk reports.
Consec 2023 was the final year that Bill Butler was chairing, he announced at the end of the day. He’s the retired chief executive of the Security Industry Authority (SIA), who has kept an interest in the sector after his stint at the regulator from 2009 to 2015; and who has retained his wry sense of humour. He’s pictured right, receiving a token of appreciation from the ASC’s Gary Thomas, whose first Consec this was as chair.
While as ever Consec ran according to the Chatham House rule, some of the speakers and their subjects, or at least the places they came from, are known to Professional Security Magazine readers. For example, the risk forecasting consultancy Sibylline. For 2023, Gareth Westwood, head of global intelligence at the company, accompanied several analysts who ranged over world affairs by region, physical and cyber, and how the political and geopolitical events such as elections have social and economic effects, and affect corporate business. Thus attenders, ASC members and exhibitors and guests, got an inkling of what will be in Sibylline’s annual forecast, launched online next month; and at an in-person event in London on Thursday evening, November 24.
Philip Grindell, founder of Defuse Global went over behavioural threat management, to ‘take the guesswork’ out of protecting high-profile people, whether parliamentarians (as he was tasked to do while still serving in the police, after the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox on the eve of the Euro-referendum in 2016) or footballers and the like or corporate executives; put another way, to separate the ‘noise’ (those making threats) from those who might escalate as far as carrying out an act, violent or other, against their target. From Philip’s presentation a truth came out that applies to protective security more generally; while it’s not right, and possibly dangerously so, to have too little security to meet a threat, so also is it not right to over-react to a threat by not understanding it – in the case of online threats against public figures, England footballers who miss penalty kicks and so forth, it’s unnecessary (and perhaps costly) to bump up security around them if those making the threat online did it in the heat of a (drunken?) moment and thought no more of it. That’s not to deny that some people do get fixated and carry out assassinations and campaigns against targets; the expertise is in spotting them (and then doing something about it).
Consec has long been a place where you get authoritative and official words, in some past years from the military, and yesterday it was about and from the UK official National Protective Security Authority (NPSA); and an unidentified man from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), on disinformation. When on Twitter (the social media platform now known as X) on October 8 went a 25-second clip of Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer allegedly swearing at staffers, to make an anti-Labour point, liked by 4.6k, and not taken down some days later (as the NCSC man pointed out), the world has a knotty problem of how to spot fakes (and yes, even if they are taken down, has damage already been done?). More troublingly still, it’s well known that young people turn solely to social media platforms for their news, while older generations stick with the likes of the BBC. How then to raise ‘digital literacy’ in society, to avoid the public’s degrading trust in its institutions and democracy? While the NCSC speaker did not have ready answers, it’s surely not for them to come up with answers, solely or at all; it’s a matter for political policy-makers, tech firms, schools, and every parent; and ultimately everyone has to take responsibility for what they read and re-tweet.
After lunch, Jayne King as chair of the umbrella body the Security Commonwealth gave an update; a re-launch of the body is coming. Robert Hall spoke about the latest version of the UK Government’s National Risk Register, which he linked with the earlier-published resilience framework. An article by Robert on the register featured in the September print edition of Professional Security.
As at the two previous Consecs, much time was devoted to the Manchester Arena Inquiry and its findings. Paul Greaney – now a KC, is still like the Inquiry chair Sir John Saunders taking an interest in the subject although the Inquiry’s third and final volume came out in March. As in previous years, he spoke remotely, while the Home Office official responsible for the monitoring to see that the Inquiry’s recommendations get followed up by various Government departments and others, Shaun Hipgrave, was at the event.
If the covid pandemic had a silver lining, it was in the take-up of such remote connections over Zoom and the like. Before covid, the options were for a busy man like Paul Greaney to either give up a day to travel to west London and deliver for half-hour; or, more likely, to decline the invitation. No-one begrudges the remote speaking which adds to the day’s insights.
That’s far from all the speakers, and furthermore the benefits from attending Consec like other such industry events go well beyond what you learn from the conference; you gain from who you meet, whether those you already know or new people altogether. It’s noticeable that, gradually, visibly new generations are coming through, while you still see a fair number of ASC ties (as worn by Gary and Bill).
