Changing the Definition of Surveillance in the Age of Converged Risk

Surveillance deals with the act of carefully watching someone or something with the specific intent to prevent or detect a crime. A couple of decades ago that would have been a true definition as it related to protecting an enterprise against threats with limited capabilities and limited access to the enterprise. “Watching one thing” was sufficient. However, in our current technological state, that simple definition now involves more complexity and sophistication than ever before. The explosive growth of technological capabilities and people that can use them to probe, prepare and perpetrate an attack or criminal act against a geographically dispersed enterprise from thousands of miles away, undermines traditional surveillance strategies.  

The role of the CSO has significantly changed in the past 10 years and will change even more drastically over the next 10. For example, mention “convergence” and lines begin to blur – lines demarcating previously clear-cut, albeit traditional areas of management responsibility, budgets, reporting hierarchies, resourcing needs and geography. Indirectly, it challenges the more nuanced elements of competence, corporate politics, decision making and information sharing.