The primary argument for outsourcing is financial: a company can get the security expertise it needs much more cheaply by hiring someone else to provide it. Take monitoring, for example. The key to successful security monitoring is vigilance: attacks can happen at any time of the day, any day of the year. While it is possible for companies to build detection and response services for their own networks, it’s rarely cost-effective.
Staffing for security expertise 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, requires five full-time employees—more when you include supervisors and backup personnel with specialized skills. Even if an organization could find the budget for all of these people, it would be very difficult to hire them in today’s job market.
Retaining them would be even harder. Security monitoring is inherently erratic: six weeks of boredom followed by eight hours of panic, then seven weeks of boredom followed by six hours of panic. Attacks against a single organization don’t happen often enough to keep a team of this caliber engaged and interested.
This is why outsourcing is the only cost-effective way to satisfy the requirements. Think about healthcare again. I might only need a doctor twice in the coming year, but when I need one I might need him immediately, and I might need specialists. Out of a hundred possible specialties, I might need two of them—and I have no idea beforehand which ones. I would never consider hiring a team of doctors to wait around until I happen to get sick. I outsource my medical needs to my clinic, my emergency room, my hospital. Similarly, companies will outsource network security monitoring.
Aside from the aggregation of expertise, an outsourced monitoring service has other economies of scale. It can more easily hire and train personnel, simply because it needs more employees. And it can build an infrastructure to support them.Vigilant monitoring means keeping up to date on new vulnerabilities, new hacker tools, new security products, and new software releases. Outsourced security companies can spread these costs across all customers.
An outsource company also has a much broader view of the Internet. It can learn from attacks against one customer, and use that knowledge to protect all its customers. It also faces attacks much more frequently. No matter how wealthy we are, we don’t hire a doctor to sit in our living room, waiting for us to get sick. We get better medical care from a doctor who sees patient after patient, learning from each one. To an outsource security company, network attacks are everyday occurrences; its experts know exactly how to respond to any given attack, because in all likelihood they have already seen it many times before.
Private security guards have become increasingly important in our society, and the security consulting firm is one of the fastest growing in the country. Private security guards protect their employer’s investment, enforce rules and laws on the property, deter criminal activity or other problems, and many times they are the First Responders in emergency situations.
There are three things to consider when hiring security guards for both Corporate Security Services and Residential Security Services:
1) what needs to be protected,
2) what level of protection is desired, and
3) Who is going to do the protecting?
1) The first step is to determine what needs to be protected and what the guard’s responsibilities will include. Guards engaged in personal security services also patrol and inspect property to protect against fire, theft, vandalism, and illegal activity.
2) Private security guards can be armed or unarmed, in uniform or plain clothes, posted on the property or thousands of miles away viewing video cameras that are part of an interactive system. What is the level of security needed and what is the budget required achieving that level?
3) When it comes to hiring security guards, it doesn’t matter whether the guards are employed by a security guard agency or hired directly by the end user; interviewing is essential in order to find the right person for the position. The advantage of using a security consulting firm is that the company is bonded, background checks have already been made, a certain amount of training has been completed, and the guard can be terminated easily since he works for the agency.
Armed guards are specially trained in the use of firearms and licensed to carry firearms during their shift. They must be of an even temperament and should have a good understanding of the conditions surrounding the property they are protecting. Armed guards generally make more money than unarmed guards — for obvious reasons.
It is generally not a good idea for retail establishments to employ armed guards in public areas. If someone is intent on robbing a retail business, there is no way to tell who that person might be, and the guard with the gun becomes the first target. An unarmed guard will deter thieves just as well without becoming a source or cause of violence in the event of a holdup.
