Four years after a student gunned down 32 people in a rampage, Virginia Tech University officials remain adamant that they did nothing wrong by waiting two hours to warn the campus that a gunman was on the loose. Virginia Tech says it acted reasonably based on standards in place at the time and doesn’t deserve the $55,000 fine that the U.S. Department of Education imposed on the school for violating federal law with its response the day of the shootings. As of press time, they had yet to decide on whether or not to appeal the fine.
Security Officers may be some of the most difficult employees to motivate. Many, by their own admission are either finishing out their careers, waiting for a better opportunity, or just plain lazy.
When it comes to the security director – security integrator relationship, it can often look like a “he said/she-said” situation. The phrase “There’s two sides to every story,” applies as well. In fact some – not all – past relationships have been just that.
Amajor theme at this month’s ISC West in Las Vegas is the continued movement of security applications to the Internet, what some call “in the cloud” and others label Software as a Service or SaaS.
“The tragic events of today cannot be remedied with words. Our hearts go out to the victims and their families. You may be certain that although no one can predict tragedy, we have invested heavily to prevent or mitigate its consequences.”
Dazzled by analytics, video, smart card, biometrics? For many enterprises, the best security systems turn out to be people, multi-tasking, open system, interoperable, scalable male and female security officers who are first responders, ambassadors, system operators, security eyes and ears. And, when it comes to their metrics, the bottom line is continuing value for the enterprises that employ officers or contract their service.
As a security professional, how do you add value to your organization? We all know that the value of security is often hard to prove – after all, how do you gauge the impact of an event that doesn’t happen because security has prevented it from happening, and then make a convincing case to the C-suite about how much money you’re saving the business?
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