Industrial security - June 2018

For anyone unaware of ASIS International, we are a global community of 35,000 security professionals representing all aspects of security from business continuity and risk management to insider threats and active shooter incidents to IT security and cybercrime. Our members come from every sector, public and private, every size of organization and at all stages of their careers from entry-level to C-Suite and live and work in 75 countries on six continents.

At our core are several elements, education; certification; standards; professionalism and networking. Much of this can be delivered either face-to-face or on-line so that you always have access to the information you need.  The world-leading certifications validate your security management expertise and help you be globally recognized by your peers and industry.  

All this means the UK Chapter is one of the biggest in the world and we run four main Seminars, CPE/CPD and social events and are represented at most of the major security events in the UK. The UK membership is mainly mid to senior security management, from across industry and government and we are celebrating or 25^th Anniversary this year.

We are delighted to confirm that we have just agreed to support The Security Event, which will take place 9-11 April 2019 at NEC Birmingham. You can find out more information about The Security Event at www.thesecurityevent.co.uk

Done properly, security is a business enabler and adds to the bottom line.  Accordingly, one of our global initiatives is Enterprise Security Risk Management (ESRM). The purpose of this work, led by an international team of volunteer experts, is to make ASIS members more effective security professionals and more valuable members of their organizations by enabling them to better identify and manage the various aspects of security risks they face. This can lead to empowered membership, safer enterprises, a more strategic approach to risk, and a more cost-effective security function.​  

This holistic philosophy has been shown to have dramatic effects when applied to a business. The bad old days when the head of security was the person stopping things being done are, luckily, long gone. If there is a business need then the CSO and his/her team are there to make sure it happens.

This was one of the topics, along with AI, IOT, Travel Risk/Duty of care and others at ASIS Europe 2018, held in Rotterdam in April, where the overarching theme was blurred boundaries, clear risks. 

I was there with 750 other security professionals from across Europe and further afield. Over the three days, we had a great line-up of speakers and panellists, including futurist Tom Raftery and CSOs, CISOs and leading security thinkers from many major organisations including Microsoft, Philips Lighting, Deutsche Telekom, The European Space Agency and many others. As part of our mission to educate and inform, there was also a career, with speakers on preparing for interview, personal branding and session run on diversity and inclusion run by the ASIS Young Professionals and Women in Security groups.  Unusually, the event returns to Rotterdam on 27-29 March 2019.  For more information, visit www.asiseurope.org   

The main event of the year is the annual global conference, which has been recently rebranded as GSX (Global Security Exchange), which this year is in Las Vegas 23 – 27 September and will attract over 550 exhibitors with 22,000 visitors attending 300+ educational sessions. This is the biggest security education event of the year globally and I always come away from this feeling better informed and better prepared.

We live in a Vulnerable, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) World and no one has the answers to everything. It is only by engaging with our peers and sharing our knowledge with them and learning from them can we hope to prepare for the challenges that face us as security professionals: hopefully ASIS can paly a part in that.

Mike Hurst CPP is Vice Chairman of the UK Chapter of ASIS International. For more information, visit www.asis.org.uk