27-11draft

The things you say Write to: Professional Security Magazine
Westcroft, Cannock Road, Wolverhampton WV10 8QW
Phone: 01922 415233 Email: info@professionalsecurity.co.uk Web: www.professionalsecurity.co.uk
74
Dog days
Regulation of security
dogs is long overdue,
says a security company
chief.
While BS 8517-1:2016
Security dogs – Part 1:
Code of practice for
the use of general
security dogs provides
an excellent best
practice framework, it
is not a legal requirement for any supplier of
general purpose security dogs to meet the
standard. We believe it the Home Office need
to review The Private Security Industry Act 2009
and to make dog handling a licensable activity,
whereby suppliers would be obliged to meet the
code. Organisations such as the National
Association of Security Dog Users (NASDU)
diligently strive to offer courses, training and
their own accreditations, but the reality is that
best practice standards are voluntary and so do
not provide the industry-wide safeguards
against incidents that are unfortunately
inevitable. A legal obligation to meet the
standard would result in a much safer
environment, and a higher level of service to
customers who employ general purpose
security dog services. It cannot be right that
somebody can offer to ‘hire out’ dogs for
security use with no safeguards in place to the
nature, training or capability of the animal. That
this happens serves to illustrate the ridiculous
‘Wild West’ situation we find ourselves in and
An individual breach
We live in a world where cyberattacks are
constantly evolving and organisations are
continuously at risk – so the fact that 55 percent
of workers can’t remember receiving
cybersecurity training is alarming. With the
added context that the cost of suffering cyberattacks
is on the rise, it becomes unforgivable
for businesses to fail to address this. We all
know that more often than not, a breach in
security can be down to the behaviour of one
individual. Therefore every single employee
across an organisation is responsible for its
security and integrity. However, this expectation
Understand enemies
Criminals are constantly exploring new ways to
find and exploit loopholes in legitimate channels to
make the proceeds of crime look like legal tender.
Money laundering keeps hospitals from being built
as the proceeds of crime contribute nothing to the
public purse. Launderers are also bending the
property market, pricing first time buyers out. And
the profits of money laundering are the cause of
organised crime, from drug trafficking and gun
smuggling, to fraud and modern slavery. The fight
needs a new era of collaboration between financial
services, government and technology and
compliance. Understanding the motivations and
modus operandi of the people behind it is the
critical first step. Businesses need to understand
the enemies they face to protect themselves.
Rob Horton
Head of Financial Crime EMEA, BAE Systems
NOVEMBER 2017 PROFESSIONAL SECURITY
the urgency of a review. Hindsight is
uncomfortable when talking about unheeded
warnings. The risks of unregulated security
dogs, services, training and handlers are
obvious. The dogs used for security are by
definition potentially very dangerous and
capable of serious injury or fatality. A 6 stone
German Shepherd presents a formidable
deterrent when under proper control, but an
inadequately trained one in the hands of an
inadequately trained or inexperienced handler
presents a significant threat to public safety. If
and when that moment occurs, and somebody
is seriously injured or killed by an inadequately
trained animal, it will be the entire security
industry that shares the blame. Security
companies that strive to provide the highest
level of service and safety, using the best
trained animals and handlers, and who
themselves have invested in achieving at least
BS 8517-1:2016 will unfortunately count the
costs of reputational damage. As a supplier of
security dog services, as well as search dogs,
Ward Security takes great pride in its services.
Current legislation such as The Guard Dogs Act
1975, The Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, and the
latest Animal Control Bill 2015 are in place,
however, there is an obvious missing piece of
the legislative jigsaw. We call upon the security
industry and organisations that provide
guidance and accreditation to prioritise this
important issue and to lobby Government for a
strengthening of regulations that cover all
aspects of security dog services, including
training, handling, hire, and animal welfare.
David Ward
Chief Executive Officer, Ward Security
can only be met if businesses give them the
appropriate training and tools to do so. Consider
the modern flexible employee – operating
beyond their desks, accessing company
information on the move and carrying everything
they need on mobile devices. One critical
technology in securely enabling flexible working
is the VPN. With demand only set to grow, we
can expect this technology become as
widespread in the coming years as firewalls are
today. It is only with such tools and strong,
organisation-wide training programmes that
businesses can best protect themselves from
the many threats of today.
James Longworth
Solutions Architecture Manager, Insight UK
Pulling together
More than 1,000 incidents were reported to the
National Cyber Security Centre in its first year of
operation.
With so many attacks happening in the digital
world we live in, its understandable that we are
concerned. It’s one of those things that’s almost
impossible to counter as an individual- yes we
can patch, we can install security software and
we can have in place policies and procedures to
help combat opportunistic malware, but when it
comes to targeted attacks fired from the minds
of extremely intelligent people, the chances of
stopping it solo are drastically reduced. The
only way we are going to stand a chance is
working together, pulling in resources from all
fields of expertise in the cyber-security space,
Black swan watch
How do businesses plan for the next black swan
event? writes a consultancy MD.
Following the tragic events in Las Vegas on
Sunday, October 1, where 59 people were killed
and a further 527 people were injured after
Stephen Paddock opened fire on an open-air
country music festival (attended by 20,000
people) from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay
Bay hotel on the Las Vegas strip. This horrific
incident is the deadliest mass shooting in
modern US history. These types of cataclysmic
events are often referred to as a ‘black swan’; a
term which originates from a period when it was
widely accepted that all swans were white. This
world view was turned on its head in 1697 when
Dutch explorers discovered black swans in
Western Australia. Ever since, ‘black swan’ has
been used to describe an event with widespread
ramifications that was previously
assumed to be impossible, yet with hindsight
seems almost inevitable. How do you prepare
for a totally unprecedented incident? To ensure
that your business or family can weather the
storm and mitigate the damages of any social,
political or economical black swan event, it is
vital that you focus on implementing sufficient
risk management policies and business
contingency plans. Rather than trying to
anticipate what the next black swan event will
be, it is essential that you devise/execute a plan
that will be applicable for any crisis and
importantly, work for you. One of the most well
known black swan events in history has been
the sinking of the Titanic. Before its ill-fated
maiden voyage, the Titanic was the largest
passenger line in service and was heralded as
‘The Unsinkable Ship’. The Titanic had been
designed to stay afloat with four of her 16
compartments flooded but no more. Moreover,
the Titanic’s lifeboats had only been designed to
ferry passengers to nearby rescue vessels and
a lack of evacuation management meant that
many lifeboats were launched into the sea
before they were completely full. As a result,
when the Titanic finally sank, of a total 2,208
people on board, 1,503 died. The Titanic
highlights the importance of devising allencompassing
contingency plans and efficient
management policies.
Simon Giddins
MD, Blackstone Consultancy
and having a resource like the National Cyber
Security Centre can only be a good thing. It’s
not a solid wall of defence, but it’s good
protection for the UK while under attack.
Somewhere, we can analyse current attacks
and hopefully pre-empt new ones based on
intelligence and experience- we all want the
same thing, a safe place for people to do
business, an exciting place for our young to
learn and somewhere we can gain knowledge
on almost any subject we desire. Sadly the bad
guys have moved from the town square picking
pockets or bruising up the local businesses for
protection money and now live in the digital
world lurking in the shadows, waiting to hijack
our digital requests- we are not going to stop
them completely but we can limit their damage
here in the UK.
Mark James
Security Specialist, ESET
www.professionalsecurity.co.uk
p74 Letters 27-11.indd 1 11/10/2017 15:05