Comparing physical, information, and transport protection practices

¶ … Protection Discipline

The art and science of protection has evolved and transformed over the past decades where new levels of its requirements are in high demand. This structural shift in the needs for protection have also created the environment where stark contrasts between approaches and industry becomes rather evident. These noticeable differences need to be addressed in order to successfully and truly understand how this process can be maximized for effectiveness, efficiency and economics.

The purpose of this essay is to highlight and describe the different requirements, limits of authority, limits of force, material assets, ethics and best practices of three differing and distinct realms of protection. The essay will first examine physical protection be highlighting aspects of its use in the U.S. Federal Government. The essay will then explain information protection highlighted how the U.S. Military uses this type of protection and how it is reflected in their practices. This type of protection revolves around the idea of national resource protection. Finally this essay will discuss how the private individual or corporation demonstrates transoport protection and the circumstances in which it is used.

The essay will ultimately argue that protection itself is dependent upon the relative situation and the overall strategic aims of the organization that is practicing these protection services. This idea is center to the difference of qualities and requirements that are used to value and judge the impact of the protection services that are being demonstrated in all three of these very important arenas.

Demonstrating Physical Protection

Aspects of Physical Security

Physical security requires the building or critical thing being protected be secure from outside forces and dangers. Securing a building requires a deep knowledge of physical security aspects of protective security. Security forces that take posts on buildings or critical sites need to be aligned with overall strategic aims of the protective effort. In other words, advanced analysis and intelligence must be incorporated with security event. Risk analysis is an important aspect of physical security and the proper analysis requires that risks are put in their proper perspective. Furthermore, security agents working the job, must be aligned to these intentions.

Many times physical security may not be pleasing to the eye and there may be some backlash from key players within the decision making process. It is important to prioritize the right risk and placing aesthetics over security is not necessarily a good idea. In addition, all entrances to a building or critical sight must be secured. These openings are key to the actual security of the building. These key points must be accounted for in the larger scheme of any physical security scheme.

Once security standards have been put into place it is necessary for management and those who believe they are above the rules to ignore certain physical security measures. This can be exemplified in TSA lines in Federally controlled airports. This can be a mistake and allowing certain privileged people to ignore security standards creates a poor precedent and reveals many weak spots of the security plan. IDs and badges are a must to gain entrance and exit to any critical sight or building that requires physical security.

Mastering the technology is important for any physical security effort to be successful in the long run. Secret service agents must be proficient at their weapons and the computer and IT professionals working in other aspects of physical security must also be prudently trained on their technological aspects to the jobs they perform. A piece of technology becomes a burden if it is not purposefully employed in any effective or efficient means. The best approach is to keep things simple as possible and let the truth ring out.

Ethics and Mission

The act of physical protection requires training, safety and solid leadership. Those doing the protecting must be highly conditioned to ignore their own personal well being and safety for another person. This type of behavior must be molded and conditioned within the secret service and other agencies, so the agent thinks about the asset first and his own self-protection second. This type of duty suggests that those in the physical protection environment at the U.S. government level have been programmed to follow orders without question and provide useful and practical human chattel to manipulate and coerce as those who see fit wish to do.

Protecting Information

It seems that a wide range of ideas related to the creation of security of information. Protecting information may mean many things to many different people, as the definition of information is quite vague in many ways. The digitization of information also makes the protection of it that much harder. Cyberspace is not a reality we can sense without a tool, and makes the protecting of this area very challenging if not impossible.

Saltzer & Shroeder (1975) suggested "Many different designs have been proposed and mechanisms implemented for protecting information in computer systems. One reason for differences among protection schemes is their different functional properties -- the kinds of access control that can be expressed naturally and enforced. It is convenient to divide protection schemes according to their functional properties. One should recognize that concentration on protection and authentication mechanisms provides a narrow view of information security, and that a narrow view is dangerous. The objective of a secure system is to prevent all unauthorized use of information, a negative kind of requirement. It is hard to prove that this negative requirement has been achieved, for one must demonstrate that every possible threat has been anticipated. "

Information protection within the cloud has become a new challenge as well. Chen & Zhao (2012) agreed with this when they suggested that "The content of data security and privacy protection in cloud is similar to that of traditional data security and privacy protection. It is also involved in every stage of the data life cycle. But because of openness and multi-tenant characteristic of the cloud, the content of data security and privacy protection in cloud has its particularities." Information security efforts must be adapted to this new landscape. Privacy and security must be set at a special balance and provide a means for customers to both feels safe and secure, and at the expense of not invading their privacy.

Individual Protection

Ethics and Mission

The nature of the individual protection standards and practices in comparison to the collective organizations discussed in this essay is a shift in ideals. Individuals and corporations who desire and need protective services demonstrates the nature of their business. When life becomes too dangerous for an individual to navigate without help, there are strong forces at work. Force protection in these circumstances comes in many forms, but usually fills a void where government would seem to fill in this need. The ethics and missions associated with this area of protective services is independent of one another. Each individual is expected to have a tailored and appropriate protection need that is unique to circumstances involved in the situation.

Private security has become a large and powerful business in and of itself, signifying the measure of power that private corporations can wield on the global level. "There are currently more than a million professionals working in the private security industry. Going forward, law enforcement will continue to transition some responsibilities to the private sector due to demand and cost-savings. They will also continue to partner with private security in managing large-scale and high-profile events. Although the role of private security is expanding, the industry must continue to evolve to meet the challenges caused by rising world population, terrorism, emerging and competing nations, and dwindling natural resources that may cause social and political unrest. While these challenges may not be ideal for the world, they do imply that the need for dedicated and highly educated and trained security professionals will continue into the foreseeable future, " (McNally, 2012).

Requirements

Requirements for individual protection vary in many different ways. Each state in the United States may have varying laws on the matter, and each country may also have different rules. There is no official ruling body that has the last say in how an individual may protect themselves. The rule of most laws must prevent and require that personal or individual security efforts do not infringe on another person's ability to defend themselves as well. This balance is important to keep in mind, and is often a requirement that is overlooked in the larger scope of the issue.

Limits of Authority and Force

The issue of private property rights and private personal rights is at the heart of the issue when creating the limits of authority and force in personal protection issues. Since everyone has the right to protect themselves the limits of authority are relative and subjective to the incident that questions such limits of force. In many if not most instances, any discrepancies are handled by an arbitrating, organization which is usually the local law and court system, where collective forces such as police, child protective services, fire protection and others are provided for with tax donations of a group of individuals. Personal protection can transcend this legal force in other instances where these laws do not apply.

Assets

The assets that are now available in the personal and private security industry are quite remarkable. Technology has provide both new ways of creating and destroying levels of protection creating a constant flow of new assets and liabilities in the effort. Ultimate personal protection requires the ability to manage risk at incorporate what can and cannot be accepted if there is a perceived danger.

What is perceived to be an asset in the future may change depending on the circumstances of the environment. Hertig (2001) suggested that an evolution of security is forcing this change in perception. He wrote "Private security can also be harnessed to combat major criminal activity and terrorism. Terrorist groups often rob banks, shoplift, commit credit card fraud and engage in other theft offenses as "fund raisers." Private protection officers are therefore in a position to help uncover serious terrorist threats. Protection officers are on the front lines in the fight against crime. They often feed intelligence and preliminary investigative information to public law enforcement entities. In many cases, security officers at retail stores, shopping centers, colleges, healthcare facilities and parks apprehend criminals and turn them over to police. This may not be fully recognized or appreciated -- either by the public, facility management, or academia."