G l o b a l l y R e s p o n s i v e S e c u r i t y The challenge I
n one form or another firms in the UK, and London in particular, are becoming
more global every year, and acting accordingly. For the security and business continuity industry that supports them the challenge is to keep pace.
In any league table of institutions with true global reach the City of London would be close to the top. Why else would anti- globalisation protestors take such interest? Most of its corporate inhabitants are global or have powerful global interests, and the trend is firmly in that direction.
The Prime Minister’s recent trade visit to India has highlighted the trend. The party included a who’s who of British business, with strong London representation, and the themes were: more cooperation, more investment into Indian technology and infrastructure, easier visas and travel, more education opportunities; the PM spoke about our increasing reliance on Business Process Outsourcing in India in support of British industry, IT and finance, and the consequent need for us to share British cyber security skills.
Staying with India, less than five years ago that security challenge was thrown into the spotlight when terrorists attacked hotels and
transport hubs in Mumbai. The UK’s security departments and corporate operations rooms instantly found themselves at the sharp end of analysis and response. Crisis rooms, physical and virtual, sprang up around the community in response to a tsunami of information from travellers and local staff on the ground, many using their PDAs and phones to Twitter, text and email from inside the places under attack, pre-empting the media coverage by up to an hour or more. If it was not clear before just how closely connected the UK was to the places where its interests were represented, then the attacks of 2008 left no room for doubt.
India then and now shows that international businesses based in the UK, and particularly London, are affected irrevocably by security events abroad. Twelve years on from 9/11, eight from the Asian tsunami, two from the Japanese earthquake, two months from the Amenas attacks in Algeria, and in the midst of a regional crisis with global impact centred on Syria, no-one can claim with a straight face that a security event abroad does not require a security response here.
Small scale events too can be devastating in effect. In 2012 an average month saw about three or four Westerners kidnapped abroad. The response to a kidnapping might have to
be instant, the so-called golden hours. When staff are travelling, their transport, meeting arrangements, communications, tracking and alert devices are all likely to be managed from their parent control room; so when something goes wrong it is essential that whoever is at the monitoring desk interprets the event accurately and reacts instantly.
The Response These examples show the need for a control room to respond to terrorist and natural incidents abroad but such events can happen at home. IRA terrorism in Bishopsgate, the 7/7 attacks, G20 protests, IT failures, and even heavy snow, have all impacted on our ability to continue business. Either way, a security control room with globally aware staff, backed by a security vendor’s own control room thinking and acting globally, is a highly effective weapon of defence.
Firms whose security companies have a global outlook and capability will be at an advantage. For example, security companies used to working in hostile zones will pass their experience on to their security officers and to their managed control rooms. In this context, a hostile zone can of course mean a country affected by conflict or terrorism, but it can also mean one where business is threatened by espionage, hostile surveillance, even by
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