Operational contingencies and core competencies in security management

Security Management
1. Some operational contingencies are considered core because the operation could not function without it. A core operational contingency is one that must remain functioning. This is important for contingency planning, so that when you plan for the more common risks that the operation faces, you ensure that the core ones are taken care of, and will continue to run. If you run an e-commerce site, for example, you would consider the ability to keep your website running and continue taking orders as a core contingency. Everything else can suffer from some downtime if necessary, but keeping the revenue coming in is a core competency.
The non-core competencies are the ones that can be disrupted without entirely disrupting the business. This does not mean that the operation can continue indefinitely without these competencies, just that they can be interrupted without completely interrupting the operation. A classic example is human resources. A company cannot run without a human resources department, but if that department was offline for a day or two, the business would not be in a state of strife. It would still be able to continue operating, just maybe with a few issues here and there. Finance is another similar type of function, or marketing, or sales. Risk management could be offline for a day or two as well, in all honestly – you wouldn't want to run an organization without it but the business would survive for a day or two in all likelihood.
2. The Rand Report has been so influential on security practices, because it has been a thought leader in the field. Rand's work is high profile, and it calls attention to security issues. The reports have been able to identify emerging security issues, and start to lay out best practices for addressing them. In the security field, having a publication that highlights these issues in a way that makes decision-makers understand them creates a call to action. The security field benefits from both the advocacy and thought leadership. Security and risk management is a field that many people do not think about until they are faced with a crisis. The Rand Report instilled in people at leadership levels across society the need for proactive approaches to security management, and in that way is really shifted the public consciousness with respect to what good security practice should look like.
I would say that referring to security practices are private police is pejorative. Private police is polite semantics for mall cop, quite honestly, if you want to take it that way. Basically, public police forces have a certain legitimacy within society, and therefore the word police when used in another way has a pejorative connotation to it. Furthermore, security services encompasses so much more than simply patrolling and responding, so to focus on that one singular element is an inaccurate portrayal of what a private security company often does.
3. The events of 9/11 have reshaped private security in a couple of ways. First, there is more attention paid to proactivity. Where before 9/11 someone on security patrol might take a very passive approach and only look for vandals or thieves, now there is much greater attention to potential terrorist threats. Private security plays an important front-line role in preventing terrorist attacks, which is much more of a national or patriotic duty than simply protecting a piece of property, so there's this mental shift both in the security business but also in the way that the public views private security as well.
In response to this terrorist threat, 9/11 has spurred technological and training changes in the security industry as well. In order to take on this greater mandate, security firms realized that they need to modernize, including greater adoption of technology, and providing higher levels of training. They also had a market, as organizations realized that they needed to increase security consciousness, so many security firms also began adding more services, and took on a role of more importance as a result. So both the perceived importance of security and the professionalism within the industry have really improved during the years after 9/11, as there has been greater awareness of how security firms can protect not just assets but the nation.