Author: Richard Kirchner
ISBN No: 9780-124077-805
Review date: 07/05/2024
No of pages: 253
Publisher: Butterworth Heinemann - Elsevier
Publisher URL:
http://www.bh.com
Year of publication: 12/05/2014
Brief:
Surveillance and Threat Detection
price
£42.99
You might groan if you are about to be told about ‘a paradigm shift’, but when the topic is threat detection, and the author has been Chief of the Office of Threat Detection at the US Pentagon, the man is worth a hearing. Put another way, the book is about identifying the bad guys; the threat actors, in the jargon.
As it’s all very well having surveillance kit, and even better to have staff to act on the surveillance, but what’s the good of either if they are pointing the wrong way or don’t look when a criminal or terrorist does appear? As the author points out early on, terrorists and criminals do their own surveillance, and if detected, you can prevent an attack.
Familiar to the UK security person is hardening of a site; circles of physical security, from an outer ring of patrolling and observation to a middle ring of screening, and an inner ring to guard against unauthorised entry, whether using alarms, metal detectors, bollards or fences, or dogs and handlers. Kirchner suggests that we think of security ‘as concentric models of suspicious behaviour’, which can be note-taking or a last-minute dress rehearsal.
Protecting assets with gates and guards – and guns in the United States – is Kirchner suggests only half of what should be in place. “Detection is the other half,” he argues, to improve your ‘security posture’. While the book does touch on 9-11, it’s anything but devoted to countering terrorism: threats in need of detection maybe violent protesters, or cash in transit robbers. The book does come with a disclaimer; that it only gives the rudiments of how to detect threats, and isn’t a practical guide, as bad guys could read study it also. While that’s fair enough, it leaves the reader to in the author’s words ‘reach out to threat detection professionals for one on one consultations’. As the final pages on ‘surveillance detection on the horizon’ make clear, drones or UAVs will be smaller and used by everyone, governments, private security and the criminals alike.
Surveillance and Threat Detection: Prevention versus Mitigation by Richard Kirchner, published 2014 by Butterworth-Heinemann. ISBN 9780-124077-805. Visit www.elsevier.com. Hardback, 253 pages, £42.99.
