The corporate security is a quite recent concept that would take place in a modern business environment after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. Some defense experts would agree that those changes being taken after the 9/11 would not be that significant, but we would find some clues indicating that such events would make this world getting more different and significantly resilient to many security’s threats. And indeed – today’s defense is more about the resilience to some challenge, risk or threat and it seeks highly capable and skillful people to cope with them on a daily basis. The corporate security as a defense approach of the 21st century is a step forward that would offer us a chance to protect our critical and non-critical industries. The developed economies worldwide would organize their businesses in such a manner and many societies over the globe would so carefully be in the process of adoption such a new concept. In this article, we intend to discuss how corporate security works in a practice as well as provide some insights into advantages and disadvantages of this recent paradigm. In addition, there is a need to deeply and comprehensively understand such a paradigm as it could be some kind of the readiness program for the possible economic, social and security crises, so far.
Keywords: Business, Defense, Economy, Intelligence, Resources, Skill etc.
DOI: 10.55284/gjss.v8i2.730
Citation |Milica D. Djekic (2022). The Corporate Security at a Global Scale. Global Journal of Social Sciences Studies, 8(2): 56-61.
Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Funding : This study received no specific financial support.
Competing Interests: The author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper.
History : Received: 22 August 2022 / Revised: 3 October 2022 / Accepted: 17 October 2022 / Published: 1 November 2022 .
Publisher: Online Science Publishing
Highlights of this paper
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After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the world is not the same place to live and work. Even nowadays we are witnessing many security concerns in our everyday’s activities. The terrorism is an evil and ongoing problem to the modern human kind, so we all should actively participate in resolving such a challenge. By some sources, over 80% of critical infrastructure in the United Sates would belong to a private sector (Petersen, 2013; The Conference Board, 2005). That’s a significant indicator that those assets should take certain actions in order to protect their interests and resources. The 9/11 would implement the entire new concept into a business pool as well as introduce the completely new approaches within the policing activities. For instance, the Police Forces would begin dealing with the intelligence-led policing and apply the intelligence-led investigations (The Conference Board, 2005). In other words, the cops would become skillful as the intelligence officers are. In this effort, we would not claim that the 9/11 events would revolutionize a security, but rather suggest that they would invoke some significant changes into our everyday’s routine.
Indeed, many policing services would start dealing with the intelligence as a finding that would pass through some analysis and make a rational input to the case. Also, we would notice that such an approach would reduce the amount of threats and make our communities getting much securer. Would that mean the active police officers would operate as the spies? In some ways, yes! They would deal more proactively and prevent many crimes happen. Unfortunately, there are so many communications worldwide being present mainly in a cyberspace and sometimes the defense and intelligence community would not protect us from harm. The modern society would live at a quite fast pace and all of us would leave some trace on the web. Simply, today’s threats would act ad-hoc and they would target innocent civilians as their victims. The point of terrorism is to victimize some social group and induce the fear and panic amongst the rest of population (Rachel & Charlie, 2006; The Conference Board, 2005).
The role of a corporate security is to reduce a number of committed crimes happening in a business environment and prevent the nation’s critical and non-critical infrastructure from the possible threats. It’s about the carefully prepared organization of business and security staffs. The majority of corporate security officers would deal with the policing, military or intelligence background and they would get trained how to respond to any situation or prevent crime even occur through skillfully created procedures, trainings and awareness raise campaigns. De facto, there are three basic sorts of defense being present in a business environment and those are (1) physical security, (2) risk management and (3) information technology (IT) security (The Conference Board, 2005). The purpose of this effort would be to review this defense concept relying on the examples from the literature. We hope those case studies would support the readership to better understand the corporate security and also take an active role in making more useful efforts for such a field of interest.
The Conference Board would in its report from 2005 (The Conference Board, 2005) provide some overviews how corporate security could appear in a practice. Those findings are mostly the response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It’s quite interesting to notice that the main concern to security managers would be the violence at a workplace, rather than terrorism. Also, many corporate security executives would claim that their role is to protect the people and asset and they are not that interested in a financial assurance of the company. We would also notice that the security profession is the well-paid one and those folks would work hard for real and deal with many responsibilities every single day. Also, security professionals would get somehow concerned with the business continuity requirements, IT crimes and natural and man-made disasters. As we would suggest previously through this effort – there are three significant ways of corporate security and those are physical security, risk management and IT security. Further through this article, we would discuss deeper these three branches of corporate defense.
As it’s known the security is a process of maintaining an acceptable level of the risk within some environment. Let’s start with the physical security which role should be to assure the physical surrounding and invoke some safety and security procedures and policies. For instance, it’s a quite common case that the physical security managers would be responsible for making evacuation plans or dealing with the employees who should follow their instructions in the everyday’s business routines. The current trends would require that the corporate security should adapt to a business process and do its best to bring some sort of strategic thinking and acting into its daily interaction with the executives and staffs. It’s so usual that the security executives would get called the Chief Security Officers (CSOs) and they would report to the top managers being known as Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). In addition, the Chief Information Officers (CIOs) would deal with the information security and in many cases they would be the most skillful and best paid corporate security officers.
On the other hand, the role of risk managers would be to deal with the financial sector and try to reduce the expenses and boost incomes as well as deal with some insurance policies. This sort of financial risk management could get quite helpful to the entire business economy and it’s highly recommended that the companies including the small businesses should have those staffs serving within their assets. Finally, the IT security professionals would get an opportunity to protect employees, working process as well as the employer’s interests within a cyberspace. The tendency would suggest that a concept of corporate security is widely accepted in a developed world, while many developing countries still need to learn a lot about these options. We would strongly advise the overall global community to try to share their findings about this concept, because we would see many advantages in so. Some studies would bring a quite interesting clue suggesting that the corporate security is more applied in the domestic economies and less in multinational organizations. We would also find a pretty useful comment in the literature that would indicate that a corporate security would mean policing organizations (Gill & Howell, 2014). This is a quite brave claim that may suggest that the corporate security could get correlated with the Police Forces in some manner. In total, it’s well known that the US Department of Homeland Security would get responsible for combating terrorism in the United States (Petersen, 2013; The Conference Board, 2005). Any sort of additional comments to these findings would be a speculation not being covered with any rigid evidence, so we would just bring to the end this discussion. In other words, we would try to remain serious and provide only a good review using the creditable sources.
The competitive advantage is so important phase in every business process that is capable to offer some sort of profit to an organization. Being in front of any competitors could cause your business growth and development. In many cases, the good business ideas are the source of competitive advantage and as it’s known – many businesses would gather the competitive intelligence in order to take advantage over their marketplace. So, how could we correlate the competitive advantage with the corporate security? First, the corporate security would assure its organization from any sort of disadvantage and it’s logical to point on that those measures would reduce the costs, losses and the impacts of financial crime. Some sources (The Conference Board, 2005) would suggest that the company’s management officials would not that willingly admit that the commerce crime would appear within their organization. They would believe that such a sort of finding could damage the reputation of the company. We strongly disagree with such an attitude, because any crime should get reported to the authorities who would so skillfully resolve the case. Also, the employee dealing as an insider’s threat should get removed from his workplace for a reason of avoiding the future crimes happen. Through our research, we would analyze many respectful sources and notice that such a tendency is present in the developed economies, so we would notice some links with the economy of Republic of Serbia. Basically, no literature would strictly indicate how corporate security works on a macro level and we would not make any speculations, but rather provide some of our perspectives.
In addition, the corporate security would so commonly get the responsibilities over corporate governance. The corporate governance is usually correlated with the governmental agencies being its external stakeholders. As it’s known, the stakeholders are people, groups or organizations that got an interest into some asset’s operations (The International Monetary Fund, 2016). This may suggest that through a concept of the corporate security – we could make many organizations being from strategic importance to the entire country or nation. Here, we would not talk about the critical industries only. Practically, we would include all the industries and try to indicate that the close correlation between the government and industry’s organization could leverage an economical power of the entire country. The literature we would review would not suggest us that, but after careful and deep research relying on our expertise we would come to those findings. No one could openly claim that the corporate security officers would talk with the governmental agencies for a reason their activities got highly confidential and at this stage we can only guess how stuffs work for real.
At this stage, we could notice that the corporate security being coordinated with the governmental agencies could only empower a domestic economy. We cannot claim anything for sure, because that area is manly so confidential and in case our country decides to apply such a concept – it would need the detailed preparations and development of quite confidential documentation as well as publically available law regulations. Also, as one of the sources to this research – we would use the resources coming from the International Monetary Fund. That literature (The International Monetary Fund, 2016) would suggest us that the modern business should count on a confidence being developed using different levels of the trust. So, the requirements to the modern corporate security officers would be openness, flexibility and a certain amount of business skills. In other words, the imperative in such a case is to follow a business process and invest the huge efforts in making the organization being stronger and more effective. In that way, we can see why the governmental agencies could have an interest into the corporate security. It’s quite clear that a better business sector could mean more tax payers, better incomes to the country’s budget and stronger economy as well as higher living standard to all.
The corporate security may appear as a quite reliable concept for making your business being safer and securer as well as obtaining some sort of competitive advantage that would support it in increasing its profit. We would see many benefits in applying such a paradigm and obviously such a model would find its place within some developed economies. It would also seem that this concept would offer many advantages as it’s so sustainable for a long period of time. On the other hand, the modern defense and intelligence communities would need to deal with some sort of guerrilla threats that would put at risk our security. Unfortunately, nowadays we are witnessing many terrorist and crime-related offences that would wound the human rights and expose many people to a threat to their lives.
From that perspective, invoking a security into a business pool may seem as a quite smart decision. We believe that such an approach could make our world getting more resilient to a threat as well as economy being more productive and effective to its actors. In other words, there are many benefits that corporate security could bring to us. Within the developed economies, we would notice the shift from a traditional to modern security (Gill & Howell, 2014). The modern corporate security officers would deal with the wide spectrum of skills, while the traditional ones would still cope with the rigid attitude and some old-fashioned ways of combating the crime. In total, as we said – this concept is quite sustainable, so we can notice it has more pluses than minuses.
On the other hand, there would be a social flow that would insist on the human rights and some sort of privacy. As we’ve already suggested – the corporate security would deal with some level of confidentiality. That would mean some people could complain on so rigid corporate security being present at their workplace. In other words, it’s so important to assure compliance between the corporate security’s legal regulations and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (The International Monetary Fund, 2016). Also, what we can notice is that the corporate security may slow down the working process and for such a reason – it’s so important to adjust the security requirements with the working operations. It’s not good at all to cause your business process suffer for the demands such as following the security procedures and policies. In addition, the corporate security professionals should get capable to write more cost-effective and less time-consuming guidelines to the rest of their organization. Finally, we believe that the safety and security procedures are not that big concern for a reason the intelligent staffs would learn so quickly how to apply them in a practice.
The main socio-economic impact of corporate security is that we would get a community being resilient to a threat. Through this time – we can see many terrorist, organized crime and human trafficking activities being present in our direct surrounding. Some of those crimes would be prevented, while some of them still need the strong response. Dealing with the corporate security within your organization would only make your security capacities getting stronger and faster in their response to many of those challenges. Also, some developing economies may welcome the corporate security as a way of fighting effectively the financial crimes within their commerce.
As it’s known – the critical industries would cover on transportation, telecommunication services, healthcare, airports, water supply systems, water waste capacities and much more (Gill & Howell, 2014; Petersen, 2013; The Conference Board, 2005) . In other words, the critical infrastructure is any organization being from vital or strategic importance to the country. In case we observe the situation from that perspective, we would easily come to the findings how significant the role of corporate security to every society is. Also, if we have in mind that such a concept could help us being more cost-effective and less time-consuming – it’s more than obvious that such a paradigm is sustainable and beneficial from both – social and economic points of view.Some would say that the bad people would give us the lesson. Indeed, the entire human kind has learned the big lesson after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The bad guys from that time got their punishment, but new security challenges are on the road again. In the meantime, the global society has learned how to get more resilient and resistive to a threat. The purpose of corporate security is mainly to secure our business environment, but not only that. It must become the powerful engine to all economies that would leverage both – security and business capacities. Undoubtedly, the defense community would resolve the majority of concerns being present worldwide, while corporate security should empower our critical and non-critical industries. Finally, we believe that this concept would find its role in a system of the Republic of Serbia and support our country dealing with the less corruptive commerce, higher incomes from tax payers and more competitive business environment.
This effort could get understood as a quite good review contribution that would provide a qualitative overview from the literature. We hope that this paper would be a good illustration of the mentioned concept and also a starting point to new research efforts. Through this article – we’ve tried to present the corporate security at a global scale, but we also believe such an effort could get helpful to the expert’s community of the Republic of Serbia as well.
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Petersen, K. L. (2013). The corporate security professional: A hybrid agent between corporate and national security. Security Journal, 26(3), 222-235.Available at: https://doi.org/10.1057/sj.2013.13.
Rachel, B., & Charlie, E. (2006). The business of resilience, Demos, being. Retrieved from: https://www.demos.co.uk/files/thebusinessofresilience.pdf
The Conference Board. (2005). Corporate security - measures and practices, Special Report, being. Retrieved from: http://www.neweraassociates.com/downloads/conference_board.pdf .
The International Monetary Fund. (2016). Stronger emerging market corporate governance enhances financial resilience, Web Article, - being. Retrieved from: https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2016/09/27/AM16GFSRCH3Emergingmarkets .
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