Future of Security in Previous

Future of Security

In previous decades, security within nations and across enterprises was managed as an ancillary process. The lessons learned over the last two decades have elevated security management to a strategic role, as essential as information systems and human capital management (Ortmeier, 2009). The security triad includes physical security, information security and personnel security, and it's progression from manual, often serially-based processes to global coordination and synchronization of strategies continues to accelerate given the pervasive nature of the Internet and its many vulnerabilities to national and organizational security (Ortmeier, 2009). Given the highly complex nature of security and it's increasingly important role in the strategic plans of organizations and its critical role in protecting nations, enterprise security management must be tightly engrained in any strategic planning at the national and organizational level (Krull, 1995). The intent of this paper is to analyze the future of security from both a nation-based and organizational one, as the threats and risk to national security often have a multiplicative effect on organizations immediately.

Assessing the Future of Security

The following predictions of the future of security take into account the entire spectrum of threats, from those that are electronically-based to those that paradoxically have the potential to impact the freedom of those being monitored as well. The rapid acceleration of monitoring technologies has significant implications on the personal freedoms of employees and citizens (Turri, Maniam, Hynes, 2008) and the future of this area is also assessed in this analysis.

The threat of economic information warfare is evident in how nations globally are currently exploring how to shut down each other's infrastructure entirely online through hacking into power grid system. The future of security will see even more brazen attempts on the part of nations to disrupt, even destroy another nations'; power grid entirely online. Over sixteen years ago tests were being conducted in Israel on how the radioactive treatment centers in Iran could be completely shut down over the Internet (Krull, 1995). As recently as five years ago the Israelis led a group of world-class hackers and successfully impacted the production of nuclear-grade plutonium in Iran for example. This will certainly accelerate over the next decade. The United States must continue to be vigilant to these threats and design their security triad for these areas so that it is continually improving and providing greater future warning of potential threats (Ortmeier, 2009). The pace of innovation in this area of security will also accelerate quickly, requiring American universities and corporations to continually invest in detecting and deterrence technologies to avert this threat.

Another aspect of the future of security is the omniscient and omnipresent area of surveillance. The drones that the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense and others operate will grow increasingly more sophisticated over time. The level of optics and altitude these devices can reach make them capable of providing exceptional surveillance of any potential target and remain undetected for an entire mission. One that is being produced by India, just announced last month, can fly to 14,000 feet and monitor threats for days in a row (SP Special, 2012). Despite the continual pressure on lawmakers in Washington, D.C. they will not be able to cut funding on drones and surveillance as the future of national security is increasingly move in this direction.

National identity cards are also in the future of security, as governments across Europe are already showing how effective this method is at managing security across a wide population. National security cards also have the ability to provide useful information and insight to policymakers on which areas of a given country will most likely be the least secure and which pose potential security threats (Ortmeier, 2009). This will also force nations to into strategic identity management systems and taxonomies of how they classify threats to their populations. The use of analytics and big data or exceptionally large and complex data sets, will become commonplace in five years or less as a result of the adoption of national security cards across more nations in the world (Ortmeier, 2009). National security cards will also be increasingly used for managing healthcare, human services and social programs, as the United Kingdom has successfully done for example. The broader implications to the future of security from the use of national identity cards are evident in how advanced forms of security authentication continue to flourish as well (Ortmeier, 2009).