For any end-user organization, the security department is critical in keeping the premises safe. But at a time when budget constraints are the norm and companies seek to streamline operations, the security department must prove they are relevant, lest facing the prospects of budget or personnel cut.
For any end-user organization, the security department is critical in keeping the premises safe. But at a time when budget constraints are the norm and companies seek to streamline operations, the security department must prove they are relevant, lest facing the prospects of budget or personnel cut.
“If security is perceived as a commodity service that doesn’t directly improve the top or bottom line, then how can it be perceived as relevant to the business? And as a result, it is inevitable that security budgets will shrink, which is the exact trend we are witnessing,” said Erez Goldstein, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Qognify.
According to him, in order to achieve relevance, security departments will need to adopt the following trends:
Visibility in the C-suite
The C-suite, made up of company executives whose titles start with the word “chief,” makes the decisions and controls budgets. If they have limited, or delayed visibility into what is happening within security, then making the case to invest in it becomes more difficult. “If the C-Suite knew and understood the impact of incidents, then they would realize how incredibly relevant safety and security is,” Goldstein said. “This would raise their inclination to invest more.”
Understanding the relationship between business continuity and safety/security
According to Goldstein, from a financial perspective, the real value of what the security department does must be shown in numbers to prove that investing in it makes sense. “To improve the perception of relevance, it is absolutely critical to quantify the financial impact of those incidents on your organization,” he said. “Recognizing the need to develop an ROI using various tools, such as pre-packaged use cases are increasingly becoming more prevalent and useful.”
Streamlining operations with your existing safety/security platform
If the security department invests in a piece of equipment that can also be shared with other departments, then the ROI will be even greater, especially when it streamlines operations. “This is important because the benefits involved are real, tangible, and very high,” said Goldstein.
“Security departments that collaborate with unrelated departments and functions can develop plans to leverage the investment elsewhere, potentially improving profit margins by millions of dollars annually.”
Dependability: lean, reliable and consistent security operations
With more streamlined operations, fewer people are expected to do more work, and efficiency and process automation become more important. “An ongoing trend is to level the playing field with automated processes and workflows, allowing people with mixed abilities to perform many tasks quickly and accurately,” he said.
Compliance
According to Goldstein, some industries have the additional challenge of maintaining compliance and being able to prove that they have. This has led to the trend of enforcing consistent digitalized procedures across the enterprise, with the addition of integrated systems for combined logging and reporting.
Getting more people involved – even the public
One way to become more relevant is to get more people to use your system. Complementing existing conventional sensors such as cameras and perimeter fence shake detectors, mobile applications on phones and tablets enable the command center to easily receive input from people, validate them, and prioritize the responses carefully. “The people providing inputs could be staff, trusted members of the public, or even open up input from the public, just as anyone can dial 911 to register an incident,” Goldstein said. “As in any business, results have an impact on relevance,” he concluded. “The more visible influence and ROI your security department has on the organization, the more relevant it will become during budget discussions – 2016 trends are supporting this effort.”